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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIFT  OF 

Annette  Rosenshine 


t  ■       > 


Manifesto « 


Of  the 


Communist 
Party 


By 

KARL  NARX 

and 

FREDERICK  ENGELS 


AUTHORIZED   ENGLISH  TRANSLATION 


Edited  and  Annotated  by  Frederick  Engels 


Price  lO  Cents 


NEW  YORK 

Published  by  the  New  York  Labor  News  Co.,  28  City  Hal!  Place 

1908 


VALUE, 
PRICE, 


AND 


PROFIT 


From  a  Mechanical  Standpoint 

it  is  the  first  one  of  Marx's  works 
published  in  America  that  can  be 
loolced  upon  as  a  careful  piece  of 
publishing.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
this  excellent  volume  is  the  fore- 
runner of  other  volumes  of  Marx, 
and  that  America  will  have  the 
honor  of  publlshii}g  an  edition 
that  is  accurate  as  to  text,  thor- 
ough in  annotations,  convenient 
in  size,  and  presentable  in  every 
way.  The  present  bools  will  de- 
light the  lover  of  Marx,  and  every 
Socialist  will  desire  a  copy  of  it. 
— N.  Y.  Daily  People. 


By  Karl  Mabx.  Edited  by  hia  daughter  Eleanor  Mabx 
AvELiNG.  With  an  Introduction  and  Annotatioug  by  LuciEN 
Sanial. 

THIS  book  is  especially  timely,  like  everything  else  that  Marx 
wrote.     Written  a   couple   of  years   before   his   "Capital" 
appeared,  it  Is  an  address  to  workingmen,  and  covers  in 
popular  form  many  of  the       subjects  later  scientifically 
expanded  in  "Capital." 

Lucien  Sanial  says  of  it:  **It  is  universally  considered  as  the 
best  epitome  we  have  of  the  first  volume  of  'Capital,*  and  as  such, 
is  invaluable  to  the  beginner  in  economics.  It  places  him  squarely 
on  his  feet  at  the  threshold  of  his  inquiry;  that  is,  in  a  position 
where  his  perceptive  faculties  cannot  be  deceived  and  his  reasoning 
power  vitiated  by  the  very  use  of  his  eyesight ;  whereas,  by  the 
very  nature  of  his  capitalist  surroundings,  he  now  stands  on  his 
head  and  sees  all  things  inverted." 

Special  interest  attaches  to  what  Marx  says  relative  to  strikes. 
Were  the  w^orking  Class  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  subject 
matter  of  this  little  w^ork,we  should  hear  no  more  of  the  "common 
ground"  on  which  capital  and  labor  might  meet  to  settle  their 
differences. 

The  thousand  and  one  schemes  that  are  daily  being  flaunted  in 
the  faces  of  the  working  class  by  the  lieutenants  of  the  capitalists 
fihow^  the  necessity  there  is  on  the  part  of  the  working  class  for 
a  comprehensive  understanding  of  the  matter  of  wages,  the  relation 
of  the  wage  worker  to  the  employer,  the  source  of  profits,  and  the 
relation  between  profits  and  wages.  These  and  other  subjects  are 
here  presented,  and  so  clearly  does  Marx  present  them  that  all  he 
has  to  say  can  be  understood  by  any  person  willing  to  pay  close 
attention  to  his  words.  ^q^^m  ^tac^ 

Cloth,    50    Cents.         Pap«r,   16   Cents. 

NEW    YORK    LABOR     NEWS    COMPANY, 

28  CITY  HALL  PLACE,   NEW  YORK. 

P^cia  to  Iii15. 


PREFACE 


The  "Manifesto"  was  published  as  the  platform  of  the 
"Communist  League,"  a  workingmen's  association,  first  exclu- 
sively German,  later  on  international,  and,  under  the  political 
conditions  of  the  Continent  before  1848,  unavoidably  a  secret 
society.  At  a  Congress  of  the  League,  held  in  London  in  No- 
vember, 1847,  Marx  and  Engels  were  commissioned  to  prepare 
for  publication  a  complete  theoretical  and  practical  party  pro- 
gramme. Drawn  up  in  German,  in  January,  1848,  the  manu- 
script was  sent  to  the  printer  in  London  a  few  weeks  before 
the  French  revolution  of  February  24.  A  French  translation 
was  brought  out  in  Paris,  shortly  before  the  insurrection  of 
June,  1848.  The  first  English  translation,  by  Miss  Helen 
Macfarlane,  appeared  in  George  Julian  Harney's  "Red  Repub- 
lican," London,  1850.  A  Danish  and  a  Polish  edition  had  also 
been  published. 

The  defeat  of  the  Parisian  insurrection  of  June,  1848 — 
the  first  great  battle  between  Proletariat  and  Bourgeoisie — 
drove  again  into  the  background,  for  a  time,  the  social  and 
political  aspirations  of  the  European  working  class.  Thence- 
forth, the  struggle  for  supremacy  was  again,  as  it  had  been 
before  the  revolution  of  February,  solely  between  the  different 
sections  of  the  propertied  class ;  the  working  class  was  reduced 
to  a  fight  for  political  elbow-room,  and  to  the  position  of  ex- 
treme wing  of  the  Middle-class  Radicals.  Wherever  independ- 
ent proletarian  movements  continued  to  show  signs  of  life, 
they  were  ruthlessly  hunted  down.  Thus  the  Prussian  police 
hunted  out  the  Central  Board  of  the  Communist  League,  then 
located  in  Cologne.  The  members  were  arrested,  and,  after 
eighteen  months'  imprisonment,  they  were  tried  in  October, 
1852.  This  celebrated  "Cologne  Communist  trial"  lasted 
from  October  4  till  November  12 ;  seven  of  the  prisoners  were 


693 


2  PREFACE. 

sentenced  to  terms  of  imprisonment  in  a  fortress,  varying 
from  three  to  six  years.  Immediately  after  the  sentence  the 
League  was  formally  dissolved  by  the  remaining  members. 
As  to  the  "Manifesto/^  it  seemed  thenceforth  to  be  doomed  to 
oblivion. 

When  the  European  working  class  had  recovered  sufficient 
strength  for  another  attack  on  the  ruling  classes,  the  Inter- 
national Workingmen^s  Association  sprang  up.  But  this  asso- 
ciation, formed  with  the  express  aim  of  welding  into  one  body 
the  whole  militant  proletariat  of  Europe  and  America,  could 
not  at  once  proclaim  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  "Mani- 
festo.^'  The  International  was  bound  to  have  a  programme 
broad  enough  to  be  acceptable  to  the  English  Trades^  Unions, 
to  the  followers  of  Proudhon  in  France,  Belgium,  Italy  and 
Spain,  and  to  the  Lassalleans  (a)  in  Germany.  Marx,  who 
drew  up  this  programme  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  parties,  en- 
tirely trusted  to  the  intellectual  development  of  the  working 
class,  which  was  sure  to  result  from  combined  action  and 
mutual  discussion.  The  very  events  and  vicissitudes  of  the 
struggle  against  Capital,  the  defeats  even  more  than  the  vic- 
tories, could  not  help  bringing  home  to  men^s  minds  the  in- 
sufficiency of  their  various  favorite  nostrums,  and  preparing 
the  way  for  a  more  complete  insight  into  the  true  conditions 
of  working-class  emancipation.  And  Marx  was  right.  The 
International,  on  its  breaking  up  in  1874,  left  the  workers 
quite  different  men  from  what  it  had  found  them  in  1864. 
Proudhonism  in  France,  Lassalleanism  in  Germany,  were 
dying  out,  and  even  the  conservative  English  Trades^  Unions, 
though  most  of  them  had  long  since  severed  their  connection 
with  the  International,  were  gradually  advancing  towards  that 
point  at  which,  last  year  at  Swansea,  their  President  could 
say  in  their  name,  "Continental  Socialism  has  lost  its  terrors 
for  us."    In  fact,  the  principles  of  the  "Manifesto"  had  made 


(a)  Lassalle  personally,  to  ns,  always  acknowledged  himself  to  be 
a  disciple  of  Marx,  and,  as  such,  stood  on  the  ground  of  the  "Mani- 
festo." But  in  his  public  agitation,  1862-64,  he  did  not  go  beyond 
(Icmnnding  co-operative  workshops  supported  by  State  credit. 


PREFACE,  8 

considerable  headway  among  the  workingmen  of  all  countries. 

The  Manifesto  itself  thus  came  to  the  front  again.  The 
German  text  had  been,  since  1850,  reprinted  several  times  in 
Switzerland,  England  and  America.  In  1872  it  was  translated 
into  English  in  New  York,  where  the  translation  was  pub- 
lished in  "Woodhull  and  Claflin's  Weekly.''  From  this  Eng- 
lish version  a  French  one  was  made  in  "Le  Socialiste"  of  New 
York.  Since  then  at  least  two  more  English  translations, 
more  or  less  mutilated,  have  been  brought  out  in  America,  and 
one  of  them  has  been  reprinted  in  England.  The  first  Eus- 
eian  translation,  made  by  Bakounine,  was  published  at 
Herzen's  ^'KolokoF'  office  in  Geneva,  about  1863;  a  second 
one,  by  the  heroic  Vera  Zasulitch,  also  in  Geneva,  1882.  A 
new  Danish  edition  is  to  be  found  in  "Socialdemokratisk 
Bibliothek,''  Copenhagen,  1885 ;  a  fresh  French  translation  in 
"Le  Socialiste,"  Paris,  1886.  From  this  latter  a  Spanish  ver- 
sion was  prepared  and  published  in  Madrid,  1886.  The  Ger- 
man reprints  are  not  to  be  counted;  there  have  been  twelve 
altogether  at  the  least.  An  Armenian  translation,  which  was 
to  be  published  in  Constantinople  some  months  ago,  did  not 
see  the  light,  I  am  told,  because  the  publisher  was  afraid  of 
bringing  out  a  book  with  the  name  of  Marx  on  it,  while  the 
translator  declined  to  call  it  his  own  production.  Of  further 
tranelations  into  other  languages  I  have  heard,  but  have  not 
seen  them.  Thus  the  history  of  the  Manifesto  reflects,  to  a 
great  extent,  the  history  of  the  modern  working  class  move- 
ment; at  present  it  is  undoubtedly  the  most  widespread,  tlic 
most  international  production  of  all  Socialist  Literature,  the 
common  platform  acknowledged  by  millions  of  workingmen 
from  Siberia  to  California. 

Yet,  when  it  was  written,  we  could  not  have  called  it  a 
Socialist  Manifesto.  By  Socialists,  in  1847,  were  understood, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  adherents  of  the  various  Utopian  sys- 
tems: Owenites  in  England,  Fourierists  in  France,  both  of 
them  already  reduced  to  the  position  of  mere  sects,  and  gradu- 
ally dying  out ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  most  multifarious  so- 
cial quacks,  who,  by  all  manners  of  tinkering,  professed  to 


4  PREFACE. 

redress,  without  any  danger  to  capital  and  profit,  all  sorts  of 
social  grievances ;  in  both  cases  men  outside  the  working  class 
movement  and  looking  rather  to  the  "educated'^  classes  for 
support.  Whatever  portion  of  the  working  classes  had  become 
convinced  of  the  insufficiency  of  mere  political  revolutions, 
and  had  proclaimed  the  necessity  of  a  total  social  change,  that 
portion,  then,  called  itself  Communist.  It  was  a  crude,  rough- 
hewn,  purely  instinctive  sort  of  Communism ;  still  it  touched 
the  cardinal  point  and  was  powerful  enough  among  the  work- 
ing class  to  produce  the  Utopian  Communism,  in  France  of 
Cabet,  and  in  Germany  of  Weitling.  Thus,  Socialism  was, 
in  1847,  a  middle  class  movement.  Communism  a  working 
class  movement.  Socialism  was,  on  the  Continent  at  least, 
^^respectable^^ ;  Communism  was  the  very  opposite.  And  as 
our  notion,  from  the  very  beginning  was,  that  ^'the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  working  class  must  be  the  act  of  the  working  class 
itself,"  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  which  of  the  two  names 
we  must  take.  Moreover,  we  have  ever  since  been  far  from 
repudiating  it. 

The  "Manifesto"  being  our  joint  production,  I  consider 
myself  bound  to  state  that  the  fundamental  proposition  which 
forms  its  nucleus  belongs  to  Marx.  That  proposition  is :  that 
in  every  historical  epoch,  the  prevailing  mode  of  economic 
production  and  exchange,  and  the  social  organization  neces- 
sarily following  from  it,  form  the  basis  upon  which  is  built 
up,  and  from  which  alone  can  be  explained,  the  political  and 
intellectual  history  of  that  epoch ;  that  consequently  the  whole 
history  of  mankind  (since  the  dissolution  of  primitive  tribal 
society,  holding  land  in  common  ownership)  has  been  a  his- 
tory of  class  struggles,  contests  between  exploiting  and  ex- 
ploited, ruling  and  oppressed  classes ;  that  the  history  of  these 
class  struggles  forms  a  series  of  evolution  in  which,  nowa- 
days, a  stage  has  been  reached  where  the  exploited  and  the 
oppressed  class — the  proletariat — cannot  attain  its  emanci- 
pation from  the  sway  of  the  exploiting  and  ruling  class — the 
bourgeoisie — without,  at  the  same  time,  and  once  for  all, 
emancipating  society  at  large  from  all  exploitation,  oppres- 
sion, class  distinctions  and  class  struggles. 


PREFACE,  5 

This  proposition,  which,  in  my  opinion,  is  destined  to  do 
for  history  what  Darwin's  theory  has  done  for  biology,  we, 
both  of  lis,  had  been  gradually  approaching  for  some  years 
before  1845.  How  far  I  had  independently  progressed  toward 
it,  is  best  shown  by  my  "Condition  of  the  Working  Class  in 
England/^  (b)  But  when  I  again  met  Marx  at  Brussels  in 
the  spring  of  1845,  he  had  it  ready  worked  out,  and  put  it 
before  me,  in  terms  almost  as  clear  as  those  in  which  I  have 
stated  it  here. 

From  our  joint  preface  to  the  German  edition  of  1872, 
I  quote  the  following: 

"However  much  the  state  of  things  may  have  altered  dur- 
ing the  last  twenty-five  years,  the  general  principles  laid 
down  in  this  Manifesto  are,  on  the  whole,  as  correct  to-day 
as  ever.  Here  and  there  some  detail  might  be  improved.  The 
practical  application  of  the  principles  will  depend,  as  the 
Manifesto  itself  states,  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  on  the 
historical  conditions  for  the  time  being  existing,  and  for  that 
reason  no  special  stress  is  laid  on  the  revolutionary  measures 
proposed  at  the  end  of  Section  II.  That  passage  would,  in 
many  respects,  be  very  differently  worded  to-day.  In  view  of 
the  gigantic  strides  of  modern  industry  since  1848,  and  of  the 
accompanying  improved  and  extended  organization  of  the 
working  class ;  in  view  of  the  practical  experience  gained,  first 
in  the  February  revolution,  and  then,  still  more,  in  the  Paris 
Commune,  where  the  proletariat  for  the  first  time  held  po- 
litical power  for  two  whole  months,  this  programme  has  in 
some  details  become  antiquated.  One  thing  especially  was 
proved  by  the  Commune,  viz.,  that  'the  working  class  cannot 
simply  lay  hold  of  the  ready-made  State  machinery,  and  wield 
it  for  its  own  purposes."  (See  'The  Civil  War  in  France; 
Address  of  the  General  Council  of  the  International  Working- 
men's  Association,'  London,  Truelove,  1871,  p.  15,  where  this 
point  is  further  developed.)     Further,  it  is  self-evident  that 

(b)  The  condition  of  the  Working  Class  in  England  in  1844.  By 
Frederick  Engels.  Translated  by  Florence  K.  Wischnewetzky.  To  be 
had  from  the  N.  Y.  Labor  News  Ck>.,  28  aty  Hall  Place,  New  York. 


«  PREFACE. 

the  criticism  of  Socialist  literature  is  deficient  in  relation  to 
the  present  time,  because  it  comes  down  only  to  1847 ;  also,  that 
the  remarks  on  the  relation  of  the  Communists  to  ttie  various 
opposition  parties  (Section  IV.)^  although  in  principle  still 
correct,  yet  in  practice  are  antiquated,  because  the  political 
situation  has  been  entirely  changed,  and  the  progress  of  his- 
tory has  swept  from  off  the  earth  the  greater  portion  of  the 
political  parties  there  enumerated. 

"But,  then,  the  Manifesto  has  become  a  historical  document 
which  we  have  no  longer  any  right  to  alter/' 

The  present  translation  is  by  Mr.  Samuel  Moore,  the 
translator  of  the  greater  portion  of  Marx's  "Capital/'  We 
have  revised  it  and  I  have  added  a  few  notes  explanatory  of 
historical  allusions. 

Frederick  Engels. 

London,  January  30,  1888. 


MANIFESTO 

OF  THE 

COMMUNIST  PARTY. 


By  Karl  Marx  and  Frederick  Engels. 


A  specter  is  haunting  Europe — the  specter  of  Commun- 
ism. All  the  powers  of  old  Europe  have  entered  into  a  holy 
alliance  to  exorcise  this  specter;  Pope  and  Czar,  Mettemich 
and  Guizot,  French  radicals  and  German  police  spies. 

Where  is  the  party  in  opposition  that  has  not  been  decried 
as  Communistic  by  its  opponents  in  power  ?  Where  the  opposi- 
tion that  has  not  hurled  back  the  branding  reproach  of  Com- 
munism, against  the  more  advanced  opposition  parties,  as  well 
as  against  its  reactionary  adversaries? 

Two  things  result  from  this  fact. 

I.  Communism  is  already  acknowledged  by  all  European 
powers  to  be  in  itself  a  power. 

II.  It  is  high  time  that  Communists  should  openly,  in 
the  face  of  the  whole  world,  publish  their  views,  their  aims, 
their  tendencies,  and  meet  this  nursery  tale  of  the  Specter  of 
Communism  with  a  Manifesto  of  the  party  itself. 

To  this  end  the  Communists  of  various  nationalities  have 
assembled  in  London,  and  sketched  the  following  manifesto 
to  be  published  in  the  English,  French,  German,  Italian, 
Flemish  and  Danish  languages. 


8  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

I. 

BOUEGEOIS  AND  PEOLETAUIAlSrS.  (a) 

The  history  of  all  hitherto  existing  society  (b)  is  the  his- 
tory of  class  struggles. 

Freeman  and  slave,  patrician  and  plebeian,  lord  and  serf, 
guildmaster  (c)  and  journeyman,  in  a  word,  oppressor  and 
oppressed,  stood  in  constant  opposition  to  one  another,  car- 
ried on  an  uninterrupted,  now  hidden,  now  open  fight,  that 
each  time  ended,  either  in  the  revolutionary  reconstitution  of 
society  at  large,  or  in  the  common  ruin  of  the  contending 
classes. 

In  the  earlier  epochs  of  history  we  find  almost  everywhere 
a  complicated  arrangement  of  society  into  various  orders,  a 
manifold  gradation  of  social  rank.  In  ancient  Eome  we  have 
patricians,  knights,  plebeians,  slaves;  in  the  middle  ages, 
feudal  lords,  vassals,  guild  masters,  journeymen,  apprentices, 

(a)  By  bourgeoisie  is  meant  the  class  of  modern  Capitalists, 
owners  of  the  means  of  social  production  and  employers  of  wage- 
labor.  By  proletariat,  the  class  of  modern  wage -laborers  who,  having 
no  means  of  production  of  their  own,  are  reduced  to  selling  their 
labor-power  in  order  to  live. 

(b)  That  is,  all  written  history.  In  1847,  the  pre-history  of  so- 
ciety, the  social  organization  existing  previous  to  recorded  history, 
was  all  but  unknown.  Since  then,  Haxthausen  discovered  common 
ownership  of  land  in  Russia,  Maurer  proved  it  to  be  the  social  foun- 
dation from  which  all  Teutonic  races  started  in  history,  and  by  and 
by  village  communities  were  found  to  be,  or  to  have  been  the 
primitive  form  of  society  everywhere  from  India  to  Ireland.  The  in- 
ner organization  of  this  primitive  Communistic  society  v/as  laid  bare, 
in  its  typical  form,  by  Morgan's  crowning  discovery  of  the  true  nature 
of  the  Gens  and  its  relation  to  the  Tribe.  With  the  dissolution  of 
these  primaeval  communities  society  begins  to  be  differentiated  into 
separate  and  finally  antagonistic  classes.  I  have  attempted  to  retrace 
this  process  of  dissolution  in :  "Der  Ursprung  der  Familie,  des  Privat- 
eigenthums  und  des  Staats,"  2nd  edit.,  Stuttgart,  1886. 

(c)  Guildmaster,  that  is  a  full  member  of  a  guild,  a  master  within, 
not  a  head  of  a  guild. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  9 

serfs;  in  almost  all  of  these  classes,  again,  subordinate  grada- 
tions. 

The  modern  bourgeois  society  that  has  sprouted  from  the 
ruins  of  feudal  society,  has  not  done  away  with  class  antagon- 
isms. It  has  but  established  new  classes,  new  conditions  of 
oppression,  new  forms  of  struggle  in  place  of  the  old  ones. 

Our  epoch,  the  epoch  of  the  bourgeois,  possesses,  however, 
this  distinctive  feature:  it  has  simplified  the  class  antagon- 
isms. Society  as  a  whole  is  more  and  more  splitting  up  into 
two  great  hostile  camps,  into  two  great  classes  directly  facing 
each  other:  Bourgeoisie  and  Proletariat. 

From  the  serfs  of  the  middle  ages  sprang  the  chartered 
burghers  of  the  earliest  towns.  From  these  burgesses  the  first 
elements  of  the  bourgeoisie  were  developed. 

The  discovery  of  America,  the  rounding  of  the  Cape, 
opened  up  fresh  ground  for  the  rising  bourgeoisie.  The  East 
Indian  and  Chinese  markets,  the  colonization  of  America, 
trade  with  the  colonies,  the  increase  in  the  means  of  exchange 
and  in  commodities  generally,  gave  to  commerce,  to  naviga- 
tion, to  industry,  an  impulse  never  before  known,  and  thereby, 
to  the  revolutionary  element  in  the  tottering  feudal  society, 
a  rapid  development. 

The  feudal  system  of  industry,  under  which  industrial  pro- 
duction was  monopolized  by  close  guilds,  now  no  longer 
sufficed  for  the  growmg  wants  of  the  new  markets.  The 
manufacturing  system  took  its  place.  The  guild  masters  were 
pushed  on  one  side  by  the  manufacturing  middle  class ;  divi- 
sion of  labor  between  the  different  corporate  guilds  vanished 
in  the  face  of  division  of  labor  in  each  single  workshop. 

Meantime  the  markets  kept  ever  growing,  the  demand 
ever  rising.  Even  manufacture  no  longer  sufficed.  Thereupon 
steam  and  machinery  revolutionized  industrial  production. 


10  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

The  place  of  manufacture  was  taken  by  the  giant,  Modem  In- 
dustry, the  place  of  the  industrial  middle  class,  by  industrial 
millionaires,  the  leaders  of  whole  industrial  armies,  the  mod- 
ern bourgeois. 

Modern  industry  has  established  the  world's  market,  for 
which  the  discovery  of  America  paved  the  way.  The  market 
has  given  an  immense  development  to  commerce,  to  naviga- 
tion, to  communication  by  land.  This  development  has,  in 
its  turn,  reacted  on  the  extension  of  industry ;  and  in  propor- 
tion as  industry,  commerce,  navigation  and  railways  extended, 
in  the  same  proportion  the  bourgeoisie  developed,  increased  its 
capital,  and  pushed  into  the  background  every  class  handed 
down  from  the  middle  ages. 

We  see,  therefore,  how  the  modern  bourgeoisie  is  itself  the 
product  of  a  long  course  of  development,  of  a  series  of  revolu- 
tions in  the  modes  of  production  and  of  exchange. 

Each  step  in  the  development  of  the  bourgeoisie  was  accom- 
panied by  a  corresponding  political  advance  of  that  class.  An 
oppressed  class  under  the  sway  of  the  feudal  nobility,  an 
armed  and  self-governing  association  in  the  mediaeval  com- 
mune (d),  here  independent  urban  republic  (as  in  Italy  and 
Germany),  there  taxable  "third  estate''  of  the  monarchy  (as 
in  France),  afterwards,  in  the  period  of  manufacture  proper, 
serving  either  the  semi-feudal  or  the  absolute  monarchy  as  a 
counterpoise  against  the  nobility,  and,  in  fact,  corner-stone  of 
the  great  monarchies  in  general,  the  bourgeoisie  has  at  last, 
since  the  establishment  of  Modern  Industry  and  of  the  world's 
market,  conquered  for  itself,  in  the  modern  representative 

(d)  "Commime"  was  the  name  taken,  in  France,  by  the  nascent 
towns  even  before  they  had  conquered  from  their  feudal  lords  and 
masters,  local  self-government  and  political  rights  as  the  "Third 
Estate."  Generally  speaking,  for  the  economical  development  of  the 
bourgeoisie,  England  is  here  taken  as  the  typical  country;  for  its 
political  development,  France. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  11 

State,  exclusive  political  sway.  The  executive  of  the  modem 
State  is  but  a  committee  for  managing  the  common  affairs  of 
the  whole  bourgeoisie. 

The  bourgeoisie,  historically,  has  played  a  most  revolu- 
tionary part. 

The  bourgeoisie,  wherever  it  has  got  the  upper  hand,  has 
put  an  end  to  all  feudal,  patriarchal,  idyllic  relations.  It  has 
pitilessly  torn  asunder  the  motley  feudal  ties  that  bound 
man  to  his  "natural  superiors,"  and  has  left  remaining  no 
other  nexus  between  man  and  man  than  naked  self-interest, 
callous  "cash  payment."  It  has  drowned  the  most  heavenly 
ecstacies  of  religious  fervor,  of  chivalrous  enthusiasm,  of 
philistine  sentimentalism,  in  the  icy  water  of  egotistical  cal- 
culation. It  has  resolved  personal  worth  into  exchange  value, 
and  in  place  of  the  numberless  indefeasible  chartered  free- 
doms, has  set  up  that  single,  unconscionable  freedom — Free 
Trade.  In  one  word,  for  exploitation,  veiled  by  religious  and 
political  illusions,  it  has  substituted  naked,  shameless,  direct, 
brutal  exploitation. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  stripped  of  its  halo  every  occupation 
hitherto  honored  and  looked  up  to  with  reverent  awe.  It  has 
converted  the  physician,  the  lawyer,  the  priest,  the  poet,  the 
man  of  science,  into  its  paid  wage  laborers. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  torn  away  from  the  family  its  senti- 
mental veil,  and  has  reduced  the  family  relation  to  a  mere 
money  relation. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  disclosed  how  ft  came  to  pass  that  the 
brutal  display  of  vigor  in  the  middle  ages,  which  Eeaction- 
ists  so  much  admire,  found  its  fitting  complement  in  the  most 
slothful  indolence.  It  has  been  the  first  to  show  what  man's 
activity  can  bring  about.  It  has  accomplished  wonders  far 
surpassing  Egyptian  pyramids,  Eoman  aqueducts,  and  Gothic 


12  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

cathedrals ;  it  has  conducted  expeditions  that  put  in  the  shade 
all  former  Exoduses  of  nations  and  crusades. 

The  bourgeoisie  cannot  exist  without  constantly  revolu- 
tionizing the  instruments  of  production,  and  thereby  the  rela- 
tions of  production,  and  with  them  the  whole  relations  of  so- 
ciety. Conservation  of  the  old  modes  of  production  in  un- 
altered forms,  was,  on  the  contrary,  the  first  condition  of  ex- 
istence for  all  earlier  industrial  classes.  Constant  revolution- 
izing of  production,  uninterrupted  disturbance  of  all  social 
conditions,  everlasting  uncertainty  and  agitation,  distinguish 
the  bourgeois  epoch  from  all  earlier  ones.  All  fixed,  fast- 
frozen  relations,  with  their  train  of  ancient  and  venerable  pre- 
judices and  opinions,  are  swept  away;  all  new-formed  ones 
become  antiquated  before  they  can  ossify.  All  that  is  solid 
melts  into  air,  all  that  is  holy  is  profaned,  and  man  is  at  last 
compelled  to  face  with  sober  senses  his  real  conditions  of  life 
and  his  relations  with  his  kind. 

The  need  of  a  constantly  expanding  market  for  its  products 
chases  the  bourgeoisie  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe.  It 
must  nestle  everywhere,  settle  everywhere,  establish  connec- 
tions everywhere. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  through  its  exploitation  of  the  world's 
market  given  a  cosmopolitan  character  to  production  and  con- 
sumption in  every  country.  To  the  great  chagrin  of  Eeac- 
tionists,  it  has  drawn  from  under  the  feet  of  industry  the  na- 
tional ground  on  which  it  stood.  All  old-established  national 
industries  have  been  destroyed  or  are  daily  being  destroyed. 
They  are  dislodged  by  new  industries,  whose  introduction  be- 
comes a  life  and  death  question  for  all  civilized  nations,  by 
industries  that  no  longer  work  up  indigenous  raw  material, 
but  raw  material  drawn  from  the  remotest  zones,  industries 
whose  products  are  consumed,  not  only  at  home,  but  in  every 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  13 

quarter  of  the  globe.  In  place  of  the  old  wants,  satisfied  by 
the  productions  of  the  country,  we  find  new  wants,  requiring 
for  their  satisfaction  the  products  of  distant  lands  and  climes. 
In  place  of  the  old  local  and  national  seclusion  and  self- 
sufficiency,  we  have  intercourse  in  every  direction,  universal 
inter-dependence  of  nations.  And  as  in  material,  so  also  in 
intellectual  production.  The  intellectual  creations  of  individual 
nations  become  common  property.  National  one-sidedness  and 
narrow-mindedness  become  more  and  more  impossible,  and 
from  the  numerous  national  and  local  literatures,  there  arises 
a  world  literature. 

The  bourgeoisie,  by  the  rapid  improvement  of  all  instru- 
ments of  production,  by  the  immensely  facilitated  means  of 
communication,  draws  all,  even  the  most  barbarian,  nations 
into  civilization.  The  cheap  prices  of  its  commodities  are  the 
heavy  artillery  with  which  it  batters  down  all  Chinese  walls, 
with  which  it  forces  the  barbarians'  intensely  obstinate  hatred 
of  foreigners  to  capitulate.  It  compels  all  nations,  on  pain  of 
extinction,  to  adopt  the  bourgeois  mode  of  production ;  it  com- 
pels them  to  introduce  what  it  calls  civilization  into  their 
midst,  i.  e.,  to  become  bourgeois  themselves.  In  one  word,  it 
creates  a 'world  after  its  own  image. 

The  bourgeoisie  has  subjected  the  country  to  the  rule  of 
the  towns.  It  has  created  enormous  cities,  has  greatly  in- 
creased the  urban  population  as  compared  with  the  rural,  and 
has  thus  rescued  a  considerable  part  of  the  population  from 
the  idiocy  of  rural  life.  Just  as  it  has  made  the  country  de- 
pendent on  the  towns,  so  it  has  made  barbarian  and  semi- 
barbarian  countries  dependent  on  the  civilized  ones,  nations 
of  peasants  on  nations  of  bourgeois,  the  East  on  the  West. 

The  bourgeoisie  keeps  more  and  more  doing  away  with  the 
scattered  state  of  the  population,  of  the  means  of  production, 


14  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

and  of  property.  It  has  agglomerated  population,  centralized 
means  of  production,  and  has  concentrated  property  in  a  few 
hands.  The  necessary  consequence  of  this  was  political  cen- 
tralization. Independent,  or  but  loosely  connected  provinces, 
with  separate  interests,  laws,  governments  and  systems  of 
taxation,  became  lumped  together  into  one  nation,  with  one 
government,  one  code  of  laws,  one  national  class  interest,  one 
frontier,  and  one  customs  tariff. 

The  bourgeoisie,  during  its  rule  of  scarce  one  hundred 
years,  has  created  more  massive  and  more  colossal  productive 
forces  than  have  all  preceding  generations  together.  Subjec- 
tion of  Nature's  forces  to  man,  machinery,  application  of 
chemistry  to  industry  and  agriculture,  steam  navigation,  rail- 
ways, electric  telegraphs,  clearing  of  whole  continent^  for 
cultivation,  canalization  of  rivers,  whole  populations  conjured 
out  of  the  ground — what  earlier  century  had  even  a  presenti- 
ment that  such  productive  forces  slumbered  in  the  lap  of  so- 
cial labor  ? 

We  see  then :  the  means  of  production  and  of  exchange  on 
whose  foundation  the  bourgeoisie  built  itself  up,  were  gen- 
erated in  feudal  society.  At  a  certain  stage  in  the  develop- 
ment of  these  means  of  production  and  of  exchange,  the  con- 
ditions under  which  feudal  society  produced  and  exchanged, 
the  feudal  organization  of  agriculture  and  manufacturing  in- 
dustry, in  one  word,  the  feudal  relations  of  property,  be- 
came no  longer  compatible  with  the  already  developed  pro- 
ductive forces;  they  became  so  many  fetters.  They  had  to 
be  burst  asunder. 

Into  their  place  stepped  free  competition,  accompanied  by 
a  social  and  political  constitution  adapted  to  it,  and  by  the 
economical  and  political  sway  of  the  bourgeois  class. 

A  similar  movement  is  going  on  before  our  own  eyes. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  15 

Modern  bourgeois  society  with  its  relations  of  production,  of 
exchange,  and  of  property,  a  society  that  has  conjured  up  such 
gigantic  means  of  production  and  of  exchange,  is  like  the 
sorcerer,  who  is  no  longer  able  to  control  the  powers  of  the 
nether  world  whom  he  has  called  up  by  his  spells.  For  many 
a  decade  past  the  history  of  industry  and  commerce  is  but  the 
history  of  the  revolt  of  modern  productive  forces  against  mod- 
ern conditions  of  production,  against  the  property  relations 
that  are  the  conditions  for  the  existence  of  the  bourgeoisie 
and  of  its  rule.  It  is  enough  to  mention  the  commercial  crises 
that  by  their  periodical  return  put  on  its  trial,  each  time  more 
threateningly,  the  existence  of  the  bourgeois  society.  In  these 
crises  a  great  part  not  only  of  the  existing  products,  but  also 
of  the  previously  created  productive  forces,  is  periodically  de- 
stroyed. In  these  crises  there  breaks  out  an  epidemic  that, 
in  all  earlier  epochs,  would  have  seemed  an  absurdity — the 
epidemic  of  overproduction.  Society  suddenly  finds. itself 
put  back  into  a  state  of  momentary  barbarism;  it  appears  as 
if  a  famine,  a  universal  war  of  devastation  had  cut  off  the 
supply  of  every  means  of  subsistence ;  industry  and  commerce 
seem  to  be  destroyed;  and  why?  because  there  is  too  much 
civilization,  too  much  means  of  subsistence,  too  much  in- 
dustry, too  much  commerce.  The  productive  forces  at  the  dis- 
posal of  society  no  longer  tend  to  further  the  development  of 
the  conditions  of  bourgeois  property;  on  the  contrary,  they 
have  become  too  powerful  for  these  conditions,  by  which  they 
are  fettered,  and  so  soon  as  they  overcome  these  fetters,  they 
bring  disorder  into  the  whole  of  bourgeois  society,  endanger 
the  existence  of  bourgeois  property.  The  conditions  of  bour- 
geois society  are  too  narrow  to  comprise  the  wealth  created  by 
them.  And  how  does  the  bourgeoisie  get  over  these  crises? 
On  the  one  hand  by  enforced  destruction  of  a  mass  of  pro- 
ductive forces ;  on  the  other,  by  the  conquest  of  new  markets. 


16  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

and  by  the  more  thorough  exploitation  of  the  old  ones.  That 
is  to  say,  by  paving  the  way  for  more  extensive  and  more  de- 
structive crises,  and  by  diminishing  the  means  whereby  crises 
are  prevented. 

The  weapons  with  which  the  bourgeoisie  felled  feudalism 
to  the  ground  are  now  turned  against  the  bourgeoisie  itself. 

But  not  only  has  the  bourgeoisie  forged  the  weapons  that 
bring  death  to  itself ;  it  has  also  called  into  existence  the  men 
who  are  to  wield  those  weapons — the  modern  working  class — 
the  proletarians. 

In  proportion  as  the  bourgeoisie,  i.  e.,  capital,  is  developed, 
in  the  same  proportion  is  the  proletariat,  the  modern  working 
class,  developed;  a  class  of  laborers,  who  live  only  so  long  as 
they  find  work,  and  who  find  work  only  so  long  as  their  labor 
increases  capital.  These  laborers,  who  must  sell  themselves 
piecemeal,  are  a  commodity,  like  every  other  article  of  com- 
merce, and  are  consequently  exposed  to  all  the  vicissitudes  of 
competition,  to  all  the  fluctuations  of  the  market. 

Owing  to  the  extensive  use  of  machinery  and  to  division 
of  labor,  the  work  of  the  proletarians  has  lost  all  individual 
character,  and,  consequently,  all  charm  for  the  workman.  He 
becomes  an  appendage  of  the  machine,  and  it  is  only  the  most 
simple,  most  monotonous,  and  most  easily  acquired  knack, 
that  is  required  of  him.  Hence,  the  cost  of  production  of  a 
workman  is  restricted  almost  entirely  to  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence that  he  requires  for  his  maintenance,  and  for  the 
propagation  of  his  race.  But  the  price  of  a  commodity,  and 
therefore  also  of  labor,  is  equal,  in  the  long  run,  to  its  cost  of 
production.  In  proportion,  therefore,  as  the  repulsiveness  of 
the  work  increases,  the  wage  decreases.  !N"ay,  more,  in  propor- 
tion as  the  Use  of  machinery  and  division  of  labor  increase. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  17 

in  the  same  proportion  the  burden  of  toil  also  increases, 
whether  by  prolongation  of  the  working  hours,  by  increase  of 
the  work  exacted  in  a  given  time,  or  by  increased  speed  of 
the  machinery,  etc. 

Modern  industry  has  converted  the  little  workshop  of  the 
patriarchal  master  into  the  great  factory  of  the  industrial 
capitalist.  Masses  of  laborer^,  crowded  into  the  factory,  are 
organized  like  soldiers.  As  privates  of  the  industrial  army 
they  are  placed  under  the  command  of  a  perfect  hierarchy  of 
officers  and  sergeants.  Not  only  are  they  slaves  of  the  bour- 
geois class,  and  of  the  bourgeois  State,  they  are  daily  and 
hourly  enslaved  by  the  machine,  by  the  over-seer,  and,  above 
all,  by  the  individual  bourgeois  manufacturer  himself.  The 
more  openly  this  despotism  proclaims  gain  to  be  its  end  and 
aim,  the  more  petty,  the  more  hateful  and  the  more  embitter- 
ing it  is. 

The  less  skill  and  exertion  of  strength  is  implied  in  manual 
labor,  in  other  words,  the  more  modem  industry  becomes  de- 
veloped, the  more  is  the  labor  of  men  superseded  by  that  of 
women.  Differences  of  age  and  sex  have  no  longer  any  dis- 
tinctive social  validity  for  the  working  class.  All  are  instru- 
ments of  labor,  more  or  less  expensive  to  use,  according  to 
age  and  sex. 

No  sooner  is  the  exploitation  of  the  laborer  by  the  manu- 
facturer so  far  at  an  end  that  he  receives  his  wages  in  cash, 
than  he  is  set  upon  by  the  other  portions  of  the  bourgeoisie, 
the  landlord,  the  shopkeeper,  the  pawnbroker,  etc. 

The  lower  strata  of  the  middle  class — the  small  trades- 
people, shopkeepers,  and  retired  tradesmen  generally,  the 
handicraftsmen  and  peasants — all  these  sink  gradually  into 
the  proletariat,  partly  because  their  diminutive  capital  does 
not  suffice  for  the  scale  on  which  modem  industry  is  carried 


18  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

on,  and  is  swamped  in  the  competition  with  the  large  capital- 
ists, partly  because  their  specialized  skill  is  rendered  worthless 
by  new  methods  of  production.  Thus  the  proletariat  is 
recruited  from  all  classes  of  the  population. 

The  proletariat  goes  through  various  stages  of  develop- 
ment. With  its  birth  begins  its  struggle  with  the  bour- 
geoisie. At  first  the  contest  is  carried  on  by  individual  labor- 
ers, then  by  the  workpeople  of  a  factory,  then  by  the  operatives 
of  one  trade,  in  one  locality,  against  the  individual  bourgeois 
who  directly  exploits  them.  They  direct  their  attacks  not 
against  the  bourgeois  conditions  of  production,  but  against  the 
instruments  of  production  themselves;  they  destroy  imported 
wares  that  compete  with  their  labor,  they  smash  to  pieces 
machinery,  they  set  factories  ablaze,  they  seek  to  restore  by 
force  the  vanished  status  of  the  workman  of  the  middle  ages. 

At  this  stage  the  laborers  still  form  an  incoherent  mass 
scattered  over  the  whole  country,  and  broken  up  by  their 
mutual  competition.  If  anywhere  they  unite  to  form  more 
compact  bodies,  this  is  not  yet  the  consequence  of  their  own 
active  union,  but  of  the  union  of  the  bourgeoisie,  which  class, 
in  order  to  attain  its  own  political  ends,  is  compelled  to  set 
the  whole  proletariat  in  motion,  and  is  moreover  yet,  for  a 
time,  able  to  do  so.  At  this  stage,  therefore,  the  proletarians 
do  not  fight  their  enemies,  but  the  enemies  of  their  enemies, 
the  remnants  of  absolute  monarchy,  and  land  owners,  the  non- 
industrial  bourgeois,  the  petty  bourgeoisie.  Thus  the  whole 
historical  movement  is  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  the  bour- 
geoisie; every  victory  so  obtained  is  a  victory  for  the  bour- 
geoisie. 

But  with  the  development  of  industry  the  proletariat  not 
only  increases  in  number;  it  becomes  concentrated  in  greater 
mas?es,  its  strength  grows  and  it  feels  that  strength  more. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  19 

The  various  interests  and  conditions  of  life  within  the  ranks  of 
the  proletariat  are  more  and  more  equalized,  in  proportion  as 
machinery  obliterates  all  distinctions  of  labor,  and  nearly 
everywhere  reduces  wages  to  the  same  low  level.  The  grow- 
ing competition  among  the  bourgeois,  and  the  resulting  com- 
mercial crises,  make  the  wages  of  the  workers  ever  more 
fluctuating.  The  unceasing  improvement  of  machinery,  ever 
more  rapidly  developing,  makes  their  livelihood  more  and 
more  precarious;  the  collisions  between  individual  workman 
and  individual  bourgeois  take  more  and  more  the  character  of 
collisions  between  two  classes.  Thereupon  the  workers  begin 
to  form  combinations  (Trades'  Unions)  against  the  bourgeois^; 
they  club  together  in  order  to  keep  up  the  rate  of  wages; 
they  found  permanent  associations  in  order  to  make  provision 
beforehand  for  these  occasional  revolts.  Here  and  there  the 
contest  breaks  out  into  riots. 

Now  and  then  the  workers  are  victorious,  but  only  for  a 
time.  The  real  fruit  of  their  battles  lies  not  in  the  imme- 
diate result  but  in  the  ever  improved  means  of  communica- 
tion that  are  created  in  modern  industry  and  that  place  the 
workers  of  different  localities  in  contact  with  one  another. 
It  was  just  this  contact  that  was  needed  to  centralize  the 
numerous  local  struggles,  all  of  the  same  character,  into  one 
national  struggle  between  classes.  But  every  class  struggle  is 
a  political  struggle.  And  that  union,  to  attain  which  the 
burghers  of  the  middle  ages,  with  their  miserable  highways, 
required  centuries,  the  modern  proletarians,  thanks  to  rail- 
ways, achieve  in  a  few  years. 

This  organization  of  the  proletarians  into  a  class  and  con- 
sequently into  a  political  party,  is  continually  being  upset 
again  by  the  competition  between  the  workers  themselves.  But 
it  ever  rises  up  again;  stronger,  firmer,  mightier.     It  com- 


20  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

pels  legislative  recognition  of  particular  interests  of  the  work- 
ers, by  taking  advantage  of  the  divisions  among  the  bour- 
geoisie itself.  Thus  the  ten-hours^  bill  in  England  was  carried. 

Altogether  collisions  between  the  classes  of  the  old  society 
further,  in  many  ways,  the  course  of  the  development  of  the 
proletariat.  The  bourgeoisie  finds  itself  involved  in  a  con- 
stant battle.  At  first  with  the  aristocracy;  later  on,  with 
those  portions  of  the  bourgeoisie  itself  whose  interests  have 
become  antagonistic  to  the  progress  of  industry;  at  all  times 
with  the  bourgeoisie  of  foreign  countries.  In  all  these  coun- 
tries it  sees  itself  compelled  to  appeal  to  the  proletariat,  to 
ask  for  its  help,  and  thus  to  drag  it  into  the  political  arena. 
The  bourgeoisie  itself,  therefore,  supplies  the  proletariat  with 
weapons  for  fighting  the  bourgeoisie. 

Further,  as  we  have  already  seen,  entire  sections  of  the  rul- 
ing classes  are,  by  the  advance  of  industry,  precipitated  into 
the  proletariat,  or  are  at  least  threatened  in  their  conditions 
of  existence.  These  also  supply  the  proletariat  with  fresh 
elements  of  enlightenment  and  progress. 

Finally,  in  times  when  the  class  struggle  nears  the  decisive 
hour,  the  process  of  dissolution  going  on  within  the  ruling 
class,  in  fact  within  the  whole  range  of  old  society,  assumes 
such  a  violent,  glaring  character,  that  a  small  section  of  the 
ruling  class  cuts  itself  adrift,  and  joins  the  revolutionary 
class,  the  class  that  holds  the  future  in  its  hands.  Just  as, 
therefore,  at  an  earlier  period,  a  section  of  the  nobility  went 
over  to  the  bourgeoisie,  so  now  a  portion  of  the  bourgeoisie 
goes  over  to  the  proletariat,  and  in  particular,  a  portion  of  the 
bourgeois  ideologists,  who  have  raised  themselves  to  the  level 
of  comprehending  theoretically  the  historical  movement  as  a 
whole. 

Of  all  the  classes  that  stand  face  to  face  with  the  hour- 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  21 

geoisie  to-day,  the  proletariat  alone  is  a  really  revolutionary 
class.  The  other  classes  decay  and  finally  disappear  in  the 
face  of  modern  industry;  the  proletariat  is  its  special  and 
essential  product. 

The  lower  middle  class,  the  small  manufactnrer,  the  shop- 
keeper, the  artisan,  the  peasant,  all  these  fight  against  the 
bourgeoisie  to  save  from  extinction  their  existence  as  frac- 
tions of  the  middle  class.  They  are  therefore  not  revolution- 
ary, but  conservative.  Nay,  more,  they  are  reactionary,  for 
they  try  to  roll  back  the  wheel  of  history.  If  by  chance  they 
are  revolutionary,  they  are  so  only  in  view  of  their  impending 
transfer  into  the  proletariat ;  they  thus  defend  not  their  pres- 
ent, but  their  future  interests,  they  desert  their  own  stand- 
point to  place  themselves  at  that  of  the  proletariat. 

The  '^dangerous  class,"  the  social  scum,  that  passively  rot- 
ting class  thrown  off  by  the  lowest  layers  of  old  society,  may, 
here  and  there,  be  swept  into  the  movement  by  a  proletarian 
revolution;  its  conditions  of  life,  however,  prepare  it  far 
more  for  the  part  of  a  bribed  tool  of  reactionary  intrigue. 

In  the  conditions  of  the  proletariat,  those  of  old  society  at 
large  are  already  virtually  swamped.  The  proletarian  is  with- 
out property;  his  relation  to  his  wife  and  children  has  no 
longer  anything  in  common  with  the  bourgeois  family  rela- 
tions; modern  industrial  labor,  modem  subjection  to  capital, 
the  same  in  England  as  in  France,  in  America  as  in  Germany, 
has  stripped  him  of  every  trace  of  national  character.  La"W, 
morality,  religion,  are  to  him  so  many  bourgeois  prejudices, 
behind  which  lurk  in  ambush  just  as  many  bourgeois  interests. 

All  the  preceding  classes  that  got  the  upper  hand  sou^t 
to  fortify  their  already  acquired  status  by  subjecting  society 
at  large  to  their  conditions  of  appropriation.  The  pro- 
letarians cannot  become  masters  of  the  productive  forces  of 


'22  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

society,  except  by  abolishing  their  own  previous  mode  of  ap- 
propriation, and  thereby  also  every  other  previous  mode  of 
appropriation.  They  have  nothing  of  their  own  to  secure  and 
to  fortify;  their  mission  is  to  destroy  all  previous  securities 
for,  and  insurances  of,  individual  property. 

All  previous  historical  movements  were  movements  of 
minorities,  or  in  the  interest  of  minorities.  The  proletarian 
movement  is  the  self-conscious,  independent  movement  of  the 
immense  majority,  in  the  interest  of  the  immense  majority. 
The  proletariat,  the  lowest  stratum  of  our  present  society, 
cannot  stir,  cannot  raise  itself  up,  without  the  whole  super- 
incumbent strata  of  official  society  being  sprung  into  the  air. 

Though  not  in  substance,  yet  in  form,  the  struggle  of  the 
proletariat  with  the  bourgeoisie  is  at  first  a  national  struggle. 
The  proletariat  of  each  country  must,  of  course,  first  of  all 
settle  matters  with  its  own  bourgeoisie. 

In  depicting  the  most  general  phases  of  the  development 
of  the  proletariat,  we  traced  the  more  or  less  veiled  civil  war, 
raging  within  existing  society,  up  to  the  point  where  that 
war  breaks  out  into  open  revolution,  and  where  the  violent 
overthrow  of  the  bourgeoisie  lays  the  foundation  for  the  sway 
of  the  proletariat. 

Hitherto  every  form  of  society  has  been  based,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  on  the  antagonism  of  oppressing  and  oppressed 
classes.  But  in  order  to  oppress  a  class  certain  conditions 
must  be  assured  to  it  under  which  it  can,  at  least,  continue 
its  slavish  existence.  The  serf,  in  the  period  of  serfdom, 
raised  himself  to  membership  in  the  commune,  just  as  the 
petty  bourgeois,  under  the  yoke  of  feudal  absolutism,  man- 
aged to  develop  into  a  bourgeois.  The  modern  laborer,  on 
the  contrary,  instead  of  rising  with  the  progress  of  industry, 
sinks  deeper  and  deeper  below  the  conditions  of  existence  of 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  23 

his  own  class.  He  becomes  a  pauper,  and  pauperism  develops 
more  rapidly  than  population  and  wealth.  And  here  it  be- 
comes evident  that  the  bourgeoisie  is  unfit  any  longer  to  be 
the  ruling  class  in  society  and  to  impose  its  conditions  of 
existence  upon  society  as  an  over-riding  law.  It  is  unfit  to 
rule  because  it  is  incompetent  to  assure  an  existence  to  its 
slave  within  his  slavery,  because  it  cannot  help  letting  him 
sink  into  such  a  state  that  it  has  to  feed  him  instead  of  being 
fed  by  him.  Society  can  no  longer  live  under  this  bour- 
geoisie; in  other  words,  its  existence  is  no  longer  compatible 
with  society. 

The  essential  condition  for  the  existence,  and  for  the  swa^ 
of  the  bourgeois  class,  is  the  formation  and  augmentation  of 
capital;  the  condition  for  capital  is  wage-labor.  Wage-labor 
rests  exclusively  on  competition  between  the  laborers.  The 
advance  of  industry,  whose  involuntary  promoter  is  the  bour- 
geoisie, replaces  the  isolation  of  the  laborers,  due  to  compe- 
tition, by  their  revolutionary  combination,  due  to  association. 
The  development  of  modem  industry,  therefore,  cuts  from 
under  its  feet  the  very  foundation  on  which  the  bourgeoisie 
produces  and  appropriates  products.  What  the  bourgeoisie 
therefore  produces,  above  all,  are  its  own  grave  diggers.  Its 
fall  and  the  victory  of  the  proletariat  are  equally  inevitable. 


II. 

PEOLETARIANS  AND  COMMUNISTS. 

In  what  relation  do  the  Communists  stand  to  the  prole- 
tarians as  a  whole  ? 

The  Communists  do  not  fonn  a  separate  party  opposed  to 
other  working  class  parties. 

They  have  no  interests  separate  and  apart  from  those  of 
the  proletariat  as  a  whole. 


24 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 


They  do  not  set  up  any  sectarian  principles  of  their  own 
by  which  to  shape  and  mould  the  proletarian  movement. 

The  Communists  are  distinguished  from  the  other  work- 
ing class  parties  by  this  only:  1.  In  the  national  struggles 
of  the  proletarians  of  the  different  countries,  they  point  out 
and  bring  to  the  front  the  common  interests  of  the  entire 
proletariat,  independently  of  all  nationality.  2.  In  the  various 
stages  of  development  which  the  struggle  of  the  working  class 
against  the  bourgeoisie  has  to  pass  through,  they  always  and 
everywhere  represent  the  interests  of  the  movement  as  a 
whole. 

The  Communists,  therefore,  are  on  the  one  hand,  practi- 
cally, the  most  advanced  and  resolute  section  of  the  working 
class  parties  of  every  country,  that  section  which  pushes  for- 
ward aU  others;  on  the  other  hand,  theoretically,  they  have 
over  the  great  mass  of  the  proletariat  the  advantage  of  clear- 
ly understanding  the  line  of  march,  the  conditions,  and  the 
ultimate  general  results  of  the  proletarian  movement. 

The  immediate  aim  of  the  Communists  is  the  same  as  that 
of  all  the  other  proletarian  parties:  formation  of  the  prole- 
tariat into  a  class,  overthrow  of  the  bourgeois  supremacy, 
conquest  of  political  power  by  the  proletariat. 

The  theoretical  conclusions  of  the  Communists  are  in  no 
way  based  on  ideas  or  principles  that  have  been  invented,  or 
discovered,  by  this  or  that  would-be  universal  reformer. 

They  merely  express,  in  general  terms,  actual  relations 
springing  from  an  existing  class  struggle,  from  a  historical 
movement  going  on  under  our  very  eyes.  The  abolition  of 
existing  property  relations  is  not  at  all  a  distinctive  feature 
of  Communism. 

All  property  relations  in  the  past  have  continually  been 
subject  to  historical  change,  consequent  upon  the  change  in 
historical  conditions. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  25 

The  French  revolution,  for  example,  abolished  feudal 
property  in  favor  of  bourgeois  property. 

The  distinguishing  feature  of  Communism  is  not  the  abo- 
lition of  property  generally,  but  the  abolition  of  bourgeois 
property.  But  modern  bourgeois  private  property  is  the 
final  and  most  complete  expression  of  the  system  of  produc- 
ing and  appropriating  products,  that  is  based  on  class  an- 
tagonisms, on  the  exploitation  of  the  many  by  the  few. 

In  this  sense  the  theory  of  the  Communists  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  single  sentence :  Abolition  of  private  prop- 
erty. 

We  Communists  have  been  reproached  with  the  desire  of 
abolishing  the  right  of  personally  acquiring  property  as  the 
fruit  of  a  man's  own  labor,  which  property  is  alleged  to  be 
the  ground  work  of  all  personal  freedom,  activity  and  inde- 
pendence. 

Hard-won,  self -acquired,  self-earned  property!  Do  you 
mean  the  property  of  the  petty  artisan  and  of  the  small  peas- 
ant, a  form  of  property  that  preceded  the  bourgeois  form  ? 
There  is  no  need  to  abolish  that ;  the  development  of  industry 
has  to  a  great  extent  already  destroyed  it,  and  is  still  de- 
stroying it  daily. 

Or  do  you  mean  modern  bourgeois  private  property? 

But  does  wage  labor  create  any  property  for  the  laborer? 
Not  a  bit.  It  creates  capital,  i.  e.,  that  kind  of  property 
which  exploits  wage-labor,  and  which  cannot  increase  except 
upon  condition  of  begetting  a  new  supply  of  wage-labor  for 
fresh  exploitation.  Property,  in  its  present  form,  is  based  on 
tbe  antagonism  of  capital  and  wage  labor.  Let  us  examine*, 
both  sides  of  this  antagonism. 

To  be  a  capitalist,  is  to  have  not  only  a  purely  personal, 
but  a  social  statics  in  production.  Capital  is  a  collective  prod- 
uct, and  only  by  the  united  action  of  many  members,  nay,  in 
the  last  resort;  only  by  the  united  action  of  all  members  of 


26  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

society,  can  it  be  set  in  motion. 

Capital  is  therefore  not  a  personal,  it  is  a  social  power. 

When,  therefore,  capital  is  converted  into  common  prop- 
erty, into  the  property  of  all  members  of  society,  personal 
property  is  not  thereby  transformed  into  social  property.  It 
is  only  the  social  character  of  the  property  that  is  changed. 
It  loses  its  class  character. 

Let  us  now  take  wage-labor. 

The  average  price  of  wage-labor  is  the  minimum  wage, 
i.  e.,  that  quantum  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  which  is 
absolutely  requisite  to  keep  the  laborer  in  bare  existence  as  a 
laborer.  What,  therefore,  the  wage-laborer  appropriates  by 
means  of  his  labor,  merely  suffices  to  prolong  and  reproduce 
a  bare  existence.  We  by  no  means  intend  to  abolish  this  per- 
sonal appropriation  of  the  products  of  labor,  an  appropria- 
tion that  is  made  for  the  maintenance  and  reproduction  of 
human  life,  and  that  leaves  no  surplus  wherewith  to  com- 
mand the  labor  of  others.  All  that  we  want  to  do  away  with, 
is  the  miserable  character  of  this  appropriation,  under  which 
the  laborer  lives  merely  to  increase  capital,  and  is  allowed  to 
live  only  in  so  far  as  the  interest  of  the  ruling  class  requires  it. 

In  bourgeois  society  living  labor  is  but  a  means  to  increase 
accumulated  labor.  In  Communist  society  accumulated  labor 
is  but  a  means  to  widen,  to  enrich,  to  promote  the  existence 
of  the  laborer. 

In  bourgeois  society,  therefore,  the  past  dominates  the 
present;  in  Communist  society,  the  present  dominates  the 
past.  In  bourgeois  society  capital  is  independent  and  has 
individuality,  while  the  living  person  is  dependent  and  has 
no  individuality. 

And  the  abolition  of  this  state  of  things  is  called  by  the 
bourgeois:  abolition  of  individuality  and  freedom!  And 
rightly  so.     The  abolition  of  bourgeois  individuality,  hour- 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  27 

geois  independence,  and  bourgeois  freedom  is  undoubtedly 
aimed  at. 

By  freedom  is  meant,  under  the  present  bourgeois  condi- 
tions of  production,  free  trade,  free  selling  and  buying. 

But  if  selling  and  buying  disappears,  free  selling  and  buy- 
ing disappears  also.  This  talk  about  free  selling  and  buying, 
and  all  the  other  "brave  words"  of  our  bourgeoisie  about  free- 
dom in  general,  have  a  meaning,  if  any,  only  in  contrast  with 
restricted  selling  and  buying,  with  the  fettered  traders  of  the 
middle  ages,  but  have  no  meaning  when  opposed  to  the  Com- 
munistic abolition  of  buying  and  selling,  of  the  bourgeois 
conditions  of  production,  and  of  the  bourgeoisie  itself. 

You  are  horrified  at  our  intending  to  do  away  with  pri- 
vate property.  But  in  your  existing  society  private  property 
is  already  done  away  with  for  nine-tenths  of  the  population; 
its  existence  for  the  few  is  solely  due  to  its  non-existence  in 
the  hands  of  those  nine-tenths.  You  reproach  us,  therefore, 
with  intending  to  do  away  with  a  form  of  property,  the  nec- 
essary condition  for  whose  existence  is  the  non-existence  of 
any  property  for  the  immense  majority  of  society. 

In  one  word,  you  reproach  us  with  intending  to  do  away 
with  your  property.    Precisely  so :  that  is  just  what  we  intend. 

From  the  moment  when  labor  can  no  longer  be  converted 
into  capital,  money,  or  rent,  into  a  social  power  capable  of 
being  monopolized,  i.  e.,  from  the  moment  when  individual 
property  can  no  longer  be  transformed  into  bourgeois  prop- 
erty, into  capital,  from  that  moment,  you  say,  individuality 
vanishes ! 

You  must,  therefore,  confess  that  by  "individual"  you 
mean  no  other  person  than  the  bourgeois,  than  the  middle 
class  owner  of  property.  This  person  must,  indeed,  be  swept 
out  of  the  way,  and  made  impossible. 

Communism  deprives  no  man  of  the  power  to  appropriate 
the  products  of  society :  all  that  it  does  is  to  deprive  him  of 


M  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

the  power  to  subjugate  the  labor  of  others  by  means  of  such 
appropriation. 

It  has  been  objected,  that  upon  the  abolition  of  private 
property  all  work  will  cease,  and  universal  laziness  will  over- 
take us. 

According  to  this,  bourgeois  society  ought  long  ago  to 
have  gone  to  the  dogs  through  sheer  idleness ;  for  those  of  its 
members  who  work,  acquire  nothing,  and  those  who  acquire 
anything,  do  not  work.  The  whole  of  this  objection  is  but 
another  expression  of  tautology,  that  there  can  no  longer  be 
any  wage-labor  when  there  is  no  longer  any  capital. 

All  objections  against  the  Communistic  mode  of  produc- 
ing and  appropriating  material  products,  have,  in  the  same 
way,  been  urged  against  the  Communistic  modes  of  produc- 
ing and  appropriating  intellectual  products.  Just  as,  to  tlie 
bourgeois  the  disappearance  of  class  property  is  the  disappear- 
ance of  production  itself,  so  the  disappearance  of  class  cul- 
ture is  to  him  identical  with  the  disappearance  of  all  culture. 

That  culture,  the  loss  of  which  he  laments,  is,  for  the 
enormous  majority,  a  mere  training  to  act  as  a  machine. 

But  don't  wrangle  with  us  so  long  as  you  apply  to  our 
intended  abolition  of  bourgeois  property,  the  standard  of  your 
bourgeois  notions  of  freedom,  culture,  law,  etc.  Your  very 
ideas  are  but  the  outgrowth  of  the  conditions  of  your  bour- 
geois production  and  bourgeois  property,  just  as  your  juris- 
prudence is  but  the  will  of  your  class  made  into  a  law  for  all, 
a  will,  whose  essential  character  and  direction  are  determined 
by  the  economical  conditions  of  existence  of  your  class. 

The  selfish  misconception  that  induces  you  to  transform 
into  eternal  laws  of  nature  and  of  reason,  the  social  forms 
springing  from  your  present  mode  of  production  and  form 
of  property — historical  relations  that  rise  and  disappear  in 
the  progress  of  production — the  misconception  you  share  with 
every  ruling  class  that  has  preceded  you.     What  you  see 


COMMUmST  MANIFESTO.  29 

clearly  in  the  case  of  ancient  property,  what  you  admit  in 
the  case  of  feudal  property,  you  are  of  course  forbidden  to 
admit  in  the  case  of  your  own  bourgeois  form  of  property. 

Abolition  of  the  family !  Even  the  most  radical  flare  tip 
at  this  infamous  proposal  of  the  Communists. 

On  what  foundation  is  the  present  family,  the  bourgeois 
family,  based?  On  capital,  on  private  gain.  In  its  com- 
pletely developed  form  this  family  exists  only  among  the 
bourgeoisie.  But  this  state  of  things  finds  its  complement  in 
the  practical  absence  of  the  family  among  the  proletarians, 
and  in  public  prostitution. 

The  bourgeois  family  will  vanish  as  a  matter  of  course 
when  its  complement  vanishes,  and  both  will  vanish  with 
the  vanishing  of  capital. 

Do  you  charge  us  with  wanting  to  stop  the  exploitation  of 
children  by  their  parents?    To  this  crime  we  plead  guilty. 

But,  you  will  say,  we  destroy  the  most  hallowed  of  rela- 
tions, when  we  replace  home  education  by  social. 

And  your  education!  Is  not  that  also  social,  and  deter- 
mined by  the  social  conditions  under  which  you  educate,  by 
the  intervention,  direct  or  indirect,  of  society  by  means  of 
schools,  etc.?  The  Communists  have  not  invented  the  inter- 
vention of  society  in  education;  they  do  but  seek  to  alter  the 
character  of  that  intervention,  and  to  rescue  education  from 
the  influence  of  the  ruling  class. 

The  bourgeois  clap-trap  about  the  family  and  education, 
about  the  hallowed  co-relation  of  parent  and  child  become 
all  the  more  disgusting,  as,  by  the  action  of  modern  industry, 
all  family  ties  among  the  proletarians  are  torn  asunder,  and 
their  children  transformed  into  simple  articles  of  commerce 
and  instruments  of  labor. 

But  you  Communists  would  introduce  commimity  of 
women,  screams  tjie  whole  bourgeoisie  in  chorus. 

The  bourgeois  sees  in  his  wife  a  mere  instrument  of  pro- 


30  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

duction.  He  hears  that  the  instruments  of  production  are 
to  be  exploited  in  common,  and,  naturally,  can  come  to  no 
other  conclusion  than  that  the  lot  of  being  common  to  all 
will  likewise  fall  to  the  women. 

He  has  not  even  a  suspicion  that  the  real  point  aimed  at 
is  to  do  away  with  the  status  of  women  as  mere  instruments 
of  production. 

For  the  rest  nothing  is  more  ridiculous  than  the  virtuous 
indignation  of  our  bourgeois  at  the  community  of  women 
which,  they  pretend,  is  to  be  openly  and  oflScially  established 
by  the  Communists.  The  Communists  have  no  need  to  in- 
troduce community  of  women;  it  has  existed  almost  from 
time  immemorial. 

Our  bourgeois,  not  content  with  having  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  their  proletarians  at  their  disposal,  not  to  speak 
of  common  prostitutes,  take  the  greatest  pleasure  in  seducing 
each  other's  wives. 

Bourgeois  marriage  is  in  reality  a  system  of  wives  in  com- 
mon, and  thus,  at  the  most,  what  the  Communists  might  pos- 
sibly be  reproached  with,  is  that  they  desire  to  introduce,  in 
substitution  for  a  hypocritically  concealed,  an  openly  legal- 
ized community  of  women.  For  the  rest  it  is  self-evident 
that  the  abolition  of  the  present  system  of  production  must 
bring  with  it  the  abolition  of  the  community  of  women 
springing  from  that  system,  i.  e.,  of  prostitution  both  pub- 
lic and  private. 

The  Communists  are  further  reproached  with  desiring  to 
abolish  countries  and  nationality. 

The  workingmen  have  no  country.  We  cannot  take  from 
them  what  they  have  not  got.  Since  the  proletariat  must 
first  of  all  acquire  political  supremacy,  must  rise  to  be  the 
leading  class  of  the  nation,  must  constitute  itself  the  nation, 
it  is,  so  far,  itself  national,  though  not  in  the  bourgeois  sense 
of  the  word. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  31 

National  differences  and  antagonisms  between  peoples  are 
daily  more  and  more  vanishing;  owing  to  the  development  of 
the  bourgeoisie,  to  freedom  of  commerce,  to  the  world's  mar- 
ket, to  uniformity  in  the  mode  of  production  and  in  the  con- 
ditions of  life  corresponding  thereto. 

The  supremacy  of  the  proletariat  will  cause  them  to  van- 
ish still  faster.  United  action,  of  the  leading  civilized  coun- 
tries at  least,  is  one  of  the  first  conditions  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  proletariat. 

In  proportion  as  the  exploitation  of  one  individual  by 
another  is  put  an  end  to,  the  exploitation  of  one  nation  by 
another  will  also  be  put  an  end  to.  In  proportion  as  the 
antagonism  between  classes  within  the  nation  vanishes,  the 
hostility  of  one  nation  to  another  will  come  to  an  end. 

The  charges  against  Communism  made  from  a  religious, 
a  philosophical,  and,  generally,  from  an  ideological  stand- 
point are  not  deserving  of  serious  examination. 

Does  it  require  deep  intuition  to  comprehend  that  man's 
ideas,  views,  and  conceptions,  in  one  word,  man's  conscious- 
ness changes  with  every  change  in  the  conditions  of  his  ma- 
terial existence,  in  his  social  relations  and  in  his  social  life? 

What  else  does  the  history  of  ideas  prove,  than  that  in- 
tellectual production  changes  its  character  in  proportion  as 
material  production  is  changed?  The  ruling  ideas  of  each 
age  have  ever  been  the  ideas  of  its  ruling  class. 

When  people  speak  of  ideas  that  revolutionize  society  they 
do  but  express  the  fact  that  within  the  old  society  the  ele- 
ments of  a  new  one  have  been  created,  and  that  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  old  ideas  keeps  even  pace  with  the  dissolution  of 
the  old  conditions  of  existence. 

When  the  ancient  world  was  in  its  last  throes  the  ancient 
religions  were  overcome  by  Christianity.  When  Christian 
ideas  succumbed  in  the  eighteenth  century  to  rationalist  ideas, 
feudal  society  fought  its  death  battle  with  the  then  revolu- 


83  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

tionary  bourgeoisie.  The  ideas  of  religious  liberty  and  free- 
dom of  conscience  merely  gave  expression  to  the  sway  of  free 
competition  within  the  domain  of  knowledge. 

"Undoubtedly/'  it  will  be  said,  "religious,  moral,  philo- 
sophical and  juridical  ideas  have  been  modified  in  the  course 
of  historical  development.  But  religion,  morality,  philosophy, 
political  science,  and  law,  constantly  survived  this  change. 

"There  are  besides,  eternal  truths,  such  as  Freedom,  Jus- 
tice, etc.,  that  are  common  to  all  states  of  society.  But  Com- 
munism abolishes  eternal  truths,  it  abolishes  all  religion  and 
all  morality,  instead  of  constituting  them  on  a  new  baisis;  it 
therefore  acts  in  contradiction  to  all  past  historical  experi- 
ence.'* 

What  does  this  axjcusation  reduce  itself  to?  The  history 
of  all  past  society  has  consisted  in  the  development  of  class 
antagonisms.,  antagonisms  that  assumed  different  forms  at 
different  epochs. 

But  whaterer  form  they  may  have  taken,  one  fact  is  com- 
mon to  all  past  ages,  viz.,  tht  exploitation  of  one  part  of 
society  by  the  other.  No  wonder,  then,  that  the  social  con- 
sciousness of  past  ages,  despite  all  the  multiplicity  and  va- 
riety it  displays,  moves  within  certain  common  forms,  or 
general  ideas,  which  cannot  completely  vanish  except  with 
the  total  disappearance  of  class  antagonisms. 

The  Communist  revolution  is  the  most  radical  rupture 
with  traditional  property  relations;  no  wonder  that  its  de- 
velopment involves  the  most  radical  rupture  with  traditional 
ideas. 

But  let  us  have  done  with  the  bourgeois  objections  to 
Communism. 

We  have  seen  above  that  the  first  step  in  the  revolution  by 
the  working  class  is  to  raise  the  proletariat  to  the  position  of 
the  ruling  class ;  to  win  the  battle  of  democracy. 

The  proletariat  will  use  its  political  supremacy  to  wrest^ 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  SS 

by  degrees,  all  capital  from  the  bourgeoisie;  to  centralize  all 
instruments  of  production  in  the  hands  of  the  State,  i.  e., 
of  the  proletariat  organized  as  the  ruling  class;  and  to  in- 
crease the  total  of  productive  forces  as  rapidly  as  possible. 

Of  course,  in  the  beginning  this  cannot  be  effected  except 
by  means  of  despotic  inroads  on  the  rights  of  property  and 
on  the  conditions  of  bourgeois  production;  by  means  of 
measures,  therefore,  which  appear  economically  insufficient 
and  untenable,  but  which,  in  the  course  of  the  movement,  out- 
strip themselves,  necessitate  further  inroads  upon  the  old 
social  order  and  are  unavoidable  as  a  means  of  entirely  revo- 
lutionizing the  mode  of  production. 

These  measures  will,  of  course,  be  different  in  different 
countries. 

Nevertheless  in  the  most  advanced  countries  the  follow- 
ing will  be  pretty  generally  applicable: 

1.  Abolition  of  property  in  land  and  application  of  all 
rents  of  land  to  public  purposes. 

2.  A  heavy  progressive  or  graduated  income  tax. 

3.  Abolition  of  all  right  of  inheritance. 

4.  Confiscation  of  the  property  of  all  emigrants  and  rebels. 

5.  Centralization  of  credit  in  the  hands  of  the  State,  by 
means  of  a  national  bank  with  State  capital  and  an  exclusive 
monopoly. 

6.  Centralization  of  the  means  lof  communication  and 
transport  in  the  hands  of  the  State. 

7.  Extension  of  factories  and  instruments  of  production 
owned  by  the  State;  the  bringing  into  cultivation  of  waste 
lands,  and  the  improvement  of  the  soil  generally  in  accord- 
ance with  a  common  plan. 

8.  Equal  liability  of  all  to  labor.  Establishment  of  indus- 
trial armies,  especially  for  agriculture. 

9.  Combination  of  agriculture  with  manufacturing  indus- 
tries :  gradual  abolition  of  the  distinction  between  town  and 


84  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

country,  by  a  more  equable  distribution  of  the  population 
over  the  country. 

10.  Free  education  for  all  children  in  public  schools. 
Abolition  of  children's  factory  labor  in  its  present  form. 
Combination  of  education  with  industrial  production,  etc., 
etc. 

When,  in  the  course  of  development,  class  distinctions 
have  disappeared  and  all  production  has  been  concentrated 
in  the  hands  of  a  vast  association  of  the  whole  nation,  the 
public  power  will  lose  its  political  character.  Political  power, 
properly  so  called,  is  merely  the  organized  power  of  one  class 
for  oppressing  another.  If  the  proletariat  during  its  contest 
with  the  bourgeoisie  is  compelled,  by  the  force  of  circum- 
stances, to  organize  itself  as  a  class,  if,  by  means  of  a  revo- 
lution, it  makes  itself  the  ruling  class,  and,  as  such,  sweeps 
away  by  force  the  old  conditions  of  production  then  it  will, 
along  with  these  conditions,  have  swept  away  the  con- 
ditions for  the  existence  of  class  antagonisms,  and  of  classes 
generally,  and  will  thereby  have  abolished  its  own  supremacy 
as  a  class. 

In  place  of  the  old  bourgeois  society  with  its  classes  and 
class  antagonisms  we  shall  have  an  association  in  which  the 
free  development  of  each  is  the  condition  for  the  free  devel- 
opment of  all. 


III. 
SOCIALIST  AND  COMMUNIST  LITERATUEE. 

I.  REACTIONARY  SOCIALISM. 

(a)  Feudal  Socialism. 
Owing  to  their  historical  position,  it  became  the  vocation 
of  the  aristocracies  of  France  and  England  to  write  pam- 
phlets against  modem  bourgeois  society.    In  the  French  rev- 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  35 

olution  of  July,  1830,  and  in  the  English  reform  agitation, 
these  aristocracies  again  succumbed  to  the  hateful  upstart. 
Thenceforth,  a  serious  political  contest  was  altogether  out  of 
question.  A  literary  battle  alone  remained  possible.  But 
even  in  the  domain  of  literature  the  old  cries  of  the  restora- 
tion period  (a)  had  become  impossible. 

In  order  to  arouse  sympathy,  the  aristocracy  were  obliged 
to  lose  sight,  apparently,  of  their  own  interests,  and  to  form- 
ulate their  indictment  against  the  bourgeoisie  in  the  interest 
of  the  exploited  working  class  alone.  Thus  the  aristocracy 
took  their  revenge  by  singing  lampoons  on  their  new  master, 
and  whispering  in  his  ears  sinister  prophecies  of  coming 
catastrophe. 

In  this  way  arose  feudal  Socialism ;  half  lamentation,  half 
lampoon;  half  echo  of  the  past,  half  menace  of  the  future, 
at  times  by  its  bitter,  witty  and  incisive  criticism,  striking  the 
bourgeoisie  to  the  very  heart's  core,  but  always  ludicrous  in 
its  effects,  through  total  incapacity  to  comprehend  the  march 
of  modern  history. 

The  aris^  '^racy,  in  order  to  rally  the  people  to  them, 
waved  the  proletarian  alms-bag  in  front  for  a  banner.  But 
the  people,  so  often  as  it  joined  them,  saw  on  their  hind- 
quarters the  old  feudal  coats  of  arms  and  deserted  with  loud 
and  irreverent  laughter. 

One  section  of  the  French  Legitimists,  and  ^'Young  Eng- 
land,^^  exhibited  this  spectacle. 

In  pointing  out  that  their  mode  of  exploitation  was  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  the  bourgeoisie,  the  feudalists  forget  that 
they  exploited  under  circumstances  and  conditions  that  were 
quite  different  and  that  are  now  antiquated.  In  showing  that 
under  their  rule  the  modern  proletariat  never  existed  they 


(a)    Not  the  English  Restoration  1660  to  1689,  but  the  French 
Restoration  1814  to  1830. 


36  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

forget  that  the  modern  bourgeoisie  is  the  necessary  offspring 
of  their  own  form  of  society. 

For  the  rest,  so  little  do  they  conceal  the  reactionary  char- 
acter of  their  criticism,  that  their  chief  accusation  against 
the  bourgeoisie  amounts  to  this:  that  under  the  bourgeois 
regime  a  class  is  being  developed,  which  is  destined  to  cut  up 
root  and  branch  the  old  order  of  society. 

What  they  upbraid  the  bourgeoisie  with  is  not  so  much 
that  it  creates  a  proletariat,  as  that  it  creates  a  revolutionary 
proletariat. 

In  political  practice,  therefore,  they  join  in  all  coercive 
measures  against  the  working  class;  and  in  ordinary  life,  de- 
spite their  high  falutin  phrases,  they  stoop  to  pick  up  the 
golden  apples  dropped  from  the  tree  of  industry,  and  to 
barter  truth,  love,  and  honor  for  traffic  in  wool,  beet-root 
sugar  and  potato  spirit  (b). 

As  the  parson  has  ever  gone  hand  in  hand  with  the  land- 
lord, so  has  Clerical  Socialism  with  Feudal  Socialism. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  give  Christian  asceticism  a  So- 
cialist tinge.  Has  not  Christianity  declaimed  against  pri- 
vate property,  against  marriages,  against  the  State?  Has  it 
not  preached  in  the  place  of  these  charity  and  poverty,  celi- 
bacy and  mortification  of  the  flesh,  monastic  life  and  Mother 
Church?  Christian  Socialism  is  but  the  Holy  Water  with 
which  the  priest  consecrates  the  heart-burnings  of  the  aris- 
tocrat. 

(&)  Petty  Bourgeois  Socialism, 

The  feudal  aristocracy  was  not  the  only  class  that  was 

(b)  This  applies  chiefly  to  Germany  where  the  mnded  aristocracy 
and  squirearchy  have  large  portions  of  their  estates  cultivated  for 
their  own  account  by  stewards,  and  are  moreover,  extensive  beet -root 
sugar  manufacturers  and  distillers  of  potato  spirits.  The  wealthier 
British  aristocracy  are,  as  yet,  rather  above  that;  but  they,  too,  know 
how  to  make  up  for  declining  rents  by  lending  their  names  to  floaters 
of  more  or  less  shady  joint -stock  companies. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  37 

ruined  by  the  bourgeoisie,  not  the  only  class  whose  condi- 
tions of  existence  pined  and  perished  in  the  atmosphere  of 
modern  bourgeois  society.  The  mediaeval  burgesses  and  the 
small  peasant  proprietors  were  the  precursors  of  the  modern 
bourgeoisie.  In  those  countries  which  are  but  little  devel- 
oped, industrially  and  commercially  these  two  classes  still 
vegetate  side  by  side  with  the  rising  bourgeoisie. 

In  countries  where  modem  civilization  has  become  fully 
developed,  a  new  class  of  petty  bourgeois  has  been  formed, 
fluctuating  between  proletariat  and  bourgeoisie,  and  ever 
renewing  itself  as  a  supplementary  part  of  bourgeois  society. 
The  individual  members  of  this  class,  however,  are  being 
constantly  hurled  down  into  the  proletariat  by  the  action  of 
competition  and  as  modern  industry  develops,  they  even  see 
the  moment  approaching  when  they  will  completely  disap- 
pear as  an  independent  section  of  modem  society  to  be  re- 
placed in  manufactures,  agriculture  and  commerce,  by  over- 
lookers, bailiffs  and  shopmen. 

In  countries  like  France,  where  the  peasants  constitute 
far  more  than  half  of  the  population,  it  was  natural  that 
writers  who  sided  with  the  proletariat  against  the  bourgeoisie, 
should  use  in  their  criticism  of  the  bourgeois  regime,  the 
standard  of  the  peasant  and  petty  bourgeois,  and  from  the 
standpoint  of  these  intermediate  classes  should  take  up  the 
cudgels  for  the  working  class.  Thus  arose  petty  bourgeois 
Socialism.  Sismondi  was  the  head  of  this  school,  not  only 
in  France  but  also  in  England. 

This  school  of  Socialism  dissected  with  great  acuteness 
the  contradict!bns  in  the  conditions  of  modern  production. 
It  laid  bare  the  hypocritical  apologies  of  economists.  It  proved 
incontrovertibly  the  disastrous  effects  of  machinery  and  di- 
vision of  labor ;  the  concentration  of  capital  and  land  in  a  few 
hands;  overproduction  and  crises;  it  pointed  out  the  inevit- 
able ruin  of  the  petty  bourgeois  and  peasant,  the  misery  of 


38  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

the  proletariat,  the  anarchy  in  production,  the  crying  ine- 
qualities in  the  distribution  of  wealth,  the  industrial  war  of 
extermination  between  nations,  the  dissolution  of  old  moral 
bonds,  of  the  old  family  relations,  of  the  old  nationalities. 

In  its  positive  aims,  however,  this  form  of  Socialism  as- 
pires either  to  restoring  the  old  means  of  production  and  of 
exchange,  and  with  them  the  old  property  relations  and  the 
old  society,  or  to  cramping  the  modern  means  of  production 
and  of  exchange,  within  the  frame  work  of  the  old  property 
relations  that  have  been  and  were  bound  to  be  exploded  by 
those  means.  In  either  case,  it  is  both  reactionary  and 
Utopian. 

Its  last  words  are:  corporate  guilds  for  manufacture;  pa- 
triarchal relations  in  agriculture. 

Ultimately,  when  stubborn  historical  facts  had  dispersed 
all  intoxicating  effects  of  self-deception,  this  form  of  Social- 
ism ended  in  a,  miserable  fit  of  the  blues. 

(c)   German  or  ''True"  Socialism. 

The  Socialist  and  Communist  literature  of  France,  a  lit- 
erature that  originated  under  the  pressure  of  a  bourgeoisie  in 
power,  and  that  was  the  expression  of  the  struggle  against 
this  power,  was  introduced  into  Germany  at  a  time  when  the 
bourgeoisie  in  that  country  had  just  begun  its  contest  with 
feudal  absolutism. 

German  philosophers, — would-be  philosophers  and  heaitx 
esprits, — eagerly  seized  on  this  literature,  only  forgetting 
that  when  these  writings  immigrated  from  France  into  Ger- 
many, French  social  conditions  had  not  immigrated  along 
with  them.  In  contact  with  German  social  conditions,  this 
French  literature  lost  all  its  immediate  practical  significance, 
and  assumed  a  purely  literary  aspect.  Thus,  to  the  German 
philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  demands  of  the 
first  French  Eevolution  were  nothing  more  than  the  demands 


COMMXTNIST  MANIFESTO.  Z9 

of  "Practical  Eeason"  in  general,  and  the  utterances  of  the 
will  of  the  revolutionary  French  bourgeoisie  signified  in  their 
eyes  the  laws  of  pure  will,  of  will  as  it  was  bound  to  be,  of 
true  human  will  generally. 

The  work  of  the  German  literati  consisted  solely  in  bring- 
ing the  new  French  ideas  into  harmony  with  their  ancient 
philosophical  conscience,  or  rather,  in  annexing  the  French 
ideas  without  deserting  their  own  philosophic  point  of  view. 

This  annexation  took  place  in  the  same  way  in  which  a 
foreign  language  is  appropriated,  namely,  by  translation. 

It  is  well  known  how  the  monks  wrote  silly  lives  of  Cath- 
olic Saints  over  the  manuscripts  on  which  the  classical  works 
of  ancieot  heathendom  had  been  written.  The  German  lit- 
erati reversed  this  process  with  the  profane  French  literature. 
They  wrote  their  philosophical  nonsense  beneath  the  French 
original.  For  instance,  beneath  the  French  criticism  of  the 
economic  functions  of  money  they  wrote  "Alienation  of  Hu- 
manity," and  beneath  the  French  criticism  of  the  bourgeois 
State  they  wrote  "Dethronement  of  the  Category  of  the  Gen- 
eral," and  so  forth. 

The  introduction  of  these  philosophical  phrases  at  the 
back  of  the  French  historical  criticisms  they  dubbed  "Phil- 
osophy of  Action,"  "True  Socialism,"  "German  Science  of 
Socialism,"  "Philosophical  Foundation  of  Socialism,"  and 
so  on. 

The  French  Socialist  and  Communist  literature  was  thus 
completely  emasculated.  And,  since  it  ceased  in  the  hands  of 
the  German  to  express  the  struggle  of  one  class  with  the  other, 
he  felt  conscious  of  having  overcome  "French  one-sidedness" 
and  of  representing  not  true  requirements  but  the  require- 
ments of  truth,  not  the  interests  of  the  proletariat,  but  the 
interests  of  human  nature,  of  man  in  general,  who  belongs  to 
no  class,  has  no  reality,  and  exists  only  in  the  misty  realm 
of  philosophical  phantasy. 


40  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

This  German  Socialism,  which  took  its  school-boy  task  so 
seriously  and  solemnly,  and  extolled  its  poor  stock  in  trade 
in  such  mountebank  fashion,  meanwhile  gradually  lost  its 
pedantic  innocence. 

The  fight  of  the  German,  and  especially  of  the  Prussian 
bourgeoisie,  against  feudal  aristocracy  and  absolute  monarchy, 
in  other  words,  the  liberal  movement,  became  more  earnest. 

By  this,  the  long  wished-for  opportunity  was  offered  to 
"True  Socialism'^  of  confronting  the  political  movement  with 
the  Socialist  demands,  of  hurling  the  traditional  anathemas 
against  liberalism,  against  representative  government,  against 
bourgeois  competition,  bourgeois  freedom  of  the  press,  bour- 
geois legislation,  bourgeois  liberty  and  equality,  and  of 
preaching  to  the  masses  that  they  had  nothing  to  gain  and 
everything  to  lose  by  this  bourgeois  movement.  German  So- 
cialism forgot,  in  the  nick  of  time,  that  the  French  criti- 
cism, whose  silly  echo  it  was,  presupposed  the  existence  of 
modern  bourgeois  society,  with  its  corresponding  economic 
conditions  of  existence,  and  the  political  constitution  adapted 
thereto,  the  very  things  whose  attainment  was  the  object  of 
the  pending  struggle  in  Germany. 

To  the  absolute  governments,  with  their  following  of  par- 
sons, professors,  country  squires  and  officials,  it  served  as  a 
welcome  scarecrow  against  the  threatening  bourgeoisie. 

It  was  a  sweet  finish  after  the  bitter  pills  of  floggings  and 
bullets  with  which  these  same  governments,  just  at  that  time, 
dosed  the  German  working-class  risings. 

While  this  "True^'  Socialism  thus  served  the  government 
as  a  weapon  for  fighting  the  German  bourgeoisie,  it,  at  the 
same  time,  directly  represented  a  reactionary  interest,  the 
interest  of  the  German  philistines.  In  Germany  the  petty 
hourgeois  class,  a  relique  of  the  16th  century  and  since  then 
constantly  cropping  up  again  under  various  forms,  is  the 
real  social  basis  of  the  existing  state  of  things. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  41 

To  preserve  this  class,  is  to  preserve  the  existing  state  of 
things  in  Germany.  The  industrial  and  political  supremacy 
of  the  bourgeoisie  threatens  it  with  certain  destruction;  on 
the  one  hand,  from  the  concentration  of  capital;  on  the 
other,  from  the  rise  of  a  revolutionary  proletariat.  "True" 
Socialism  appeared  to  kill  these  two  birds  with  one  stone. 
It  spread  like  an  epidemic. 

The  robe  of  speculative  cobwebs,  embroidered  with  flow- 
ers of  rhetoric,  steeped  in  the  dew  of  sickly  sentiment,  this 
transcendental  robe  in  which  the  German  Socialists  wrapped 
their  sorry  "eternal  truths"  all  skin  and  bone,  served  to  won- 
derfully increase  the  sale  of  their  goods  amongst  such  a 
public. 

And  on  its  part,  German  Socialism  recognized  more  and 
more  its  own  calling  as  the  bombastic  representative  of  the 
petty  bourgeois  philistine. 

It  proclaimed  the  German  nation  to  be  the  model  nation, 
and  the  German  petty  philistine  to  be  the  typical  man.  To 
every  villainous  meanness  of  this  model  man  it  gave  a  hidden^ 
higher,  socialistic  interpretation,  the  exact  contrary  of  its 
real  character.  It  went  to  the  extreme  length  of  directly  op- 
posing the  'T)rutally  destructive"  tendency  of  Communism, 
and  of  proclaiming  its  supreme  and  impartial  contempt  of 
all  class-struggles.  With  very  few  exceptions,  all  the  so- 
called  Socialist  and  Communist  publications  that  now  (1847) 
circulate  in  Germany  belong  to  the  domain  of  this  foul  and 
enervating  literature. 


2.    CONSERVATIVE    OR    BOURGEOIS    SOCIALISM. 

A  part  of  the  bourgeoisie  is  desirous  of  redressing  social 
grievances,  in  order  to  secure  the  continued  existence  of  bour- 
geois society. 

To  this  section  belong  economists,  philanthropists,  human- 


42  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

itarians,  improvers  of  the  condition  of  the  working  class,  or- 
ganizers of  charity,  members  of  societies  for  the  prevention 
of  cruelty  to  animals,  temperance  fanatics,  hole  and  corner 
reformers  of  every  imaginable  kind.  This  form  of  Socialism 
has,  moreover,  been  worked  out  into  complete  systems. 

We  may  cite  Proudhon's  Philosophie  de  la  Misere  as  an 
example  of  this  form. 

The  socialistic  bourgeois  want  all  the  advantages  of  mod- 
ern social  conditions  without  the  struggles  and  dangers  nec- 
essarily resulting  therefrom.  They  desire  the  existing  state 
of  society  minus  its  revolutionary  and  disintegrating  ele- 
ments. They  wish  for  a  bourgeoisie  without  a  proletariat. 
The  bourgeoisie  naturally  conceives  the  world  in  which  it  is 
supreme  to  be  the  best;  and  bourgeois  socialism  develops  this 
comfortable  conception  into  various  more  or  less  complete 
systems.  In  requiring  the  proletariat  to  carry  out  such  a 
system,  and  thereby  to  march  straightway  into  the  social 
New  Jerusalem,  it  but  requires  in  reality,  that  the  proletariat 
should  remain  within  the  bounds  of  existing  society,  but 
should  cast  away  all  its  hateful  ideas  concerning  the  bour- 
geosie. 

A  second  and  more  practical,  but  less  systematic  form  of 
this  Socialism  sought  to  depreciate  every  revolutionary  move- 
ment in  the  eyes  of  the  working  class,  by  showing  that  no 
mere  political  reform  but  a  change  in  the  material  condi- 
tions of  existence  in  economical  relations  could  be  of  any 
advantage  to  them.-  By  changes  in  the  material  conditions 
of  existence  this  form  of  Socialism,  however,  by  no  means 
understands  abolition  of  the  bourgeois  relations  of  produc- 
tion,— an  abolition  that  can  be  effected  only  by  a  revolution — 
but  administrative  reforms,  based  on  the  continued  existence 
of  these  relations ;  reforms,  therefore,  that  in  no  respect  affect 
the  relations  between  capital  and  labor,  but,  at  the  best,  lessen 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  43 

the  cost  and  simplify  the  administrative  work  of  bourgeois 
government. 

Bourgeois  Socialism  attains  adequate  expression,  when, 
and  only  when,  it  becomes  a  mere  figure  of  speech. 

Free  Trade  :^  for  the  benefit  of  the  working  class.  Pro- 
tective Duties:  for  the  benefit  of  the  working  class.  Prison 
Reform :  for  the  benefit  of  the  working  class.  This  is  the 
last  word  and  the  only  seriously  meant  word  of  bourgeois 
Socialism. 

It  is  summed  up  in  the  phrase:  the  bourgeois  is  a  bour- 
geois— for  the  benefit  of  the  working  class. 

3.  CRITICAL-UTOPIAN  SOCIALISM  AND  COMMUNISM. 

We  do  not  here  refer  to  that  literature  which,  in  every 
great  modem  revolution,  has  always  given  voice  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  proletariat,  such  as  the  writings  of  Baboeuf  and 
others. 

The  first  direct  attempts  of  the  proletariat  to  attain  its 
own  ends,  made  in  times  of  universal  excitement,  when  feudal 
society  was  being  overthro^vn,  these  attempts  necessarily 
failed,  owing  to  the  then  undeveloped  state  of  the  proletariat, 
as  well  as  to  the  absence  of  the  economic  conditions  for  its 
emancipation,  conditions  that  had  yet  to  be  produced,  and 
could  be  produced  by  the  impending  bourgeois  epoch  alone. 
The  revolutionary  literature  that  accompanied  these  first 
movements  of  the  proletariat  had  necessarily  a  reactionary 
character.  It  inculcated  universal  asceticism  and  social  level- 
ling in  its  cradest  form. 

The  Socialist  and  Communist  systems  properly  so  called, 
those  of  St.  Simon,  Fourier,  Owen  and  others,  spring  into 
existence  in  the  early  undeveloped  period,  described  above, 
of  the  struggle  between  proletariat  and  bourgeoisie  (see: 
Section  I.,  Bourgeoisie  and  Proletariat.) 

The  founders  of  these  systems  see,  indeed,  the  class  an- 


44  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

tagonisms  as  well  as  the  action  of  the  decomposing  elements 
in  the  prevailing  form  of  society.  But  the  proletariat,  as  yet 
in  its  infancy,  offers  to  them  the  spectacle  of  a  class  without 
any  historical  initiative  or  any  independent  political  move- 
ment. 

Since  the  development  of  class  antagonism  keeps  even 
pace  with  the  development  of  industry,  the  economic  situa- 
tion, as  they  find  it,  does  not  as  yet  offer  to  them  the  material 
conditions  for  the  emancipation  of  the  proletariat.  They 
therefore  search  after  a  new  social  science,  after  new  social 
laws,  that  are  to  create  these  conditions. 

Historical  action  is  to  yield  to  their  personal  inventive 
action,  historically  created  conditions  of  emancipation  to 
phantastic  ones,  and  the  gradual,  spontaneous  class  organ- 
ization of  the  proletariat  to  an  organization  of  society  spec- 
ially contrived  by  these  inventors.  Future  history  resolves 
itself,  in  their  eyes,  into  the  propaganda  and  the  practical 
carrying  out  of  their  social  plans. 

In  the  formation  of  their  plans  they  are  conscious  of  car- 
ing chiefly  for  the  interest  of  the  working  class,  as  being  the 
most  suffering  class.  Only  from  the  point  of  view  of  being 
the  most  suffering  class  does  the  proletariat  exist  for  them. 

The  undeveloped  state  of  the  class  struggle  as  well  as  their 
own  surroundings  cause  Socialists  of  this  kind  to  consider 
themselves  far  superior  to  all  class  antagonisms.  They  want 
to  improve  the  condition  of  every  member  of  society,  even 
that  of  the  most  favored.  Hence  they  habitually  appeal  to 
society  at  large,  without  distinction  of  class;  nay,  by  pref- 
erence to  the  ruling  class.  For  how  can  people,  when  once 
they  understand  their  system,  fail  to  see  in  it  the  best  possi- 
ble plan  of  the  best  possible  state  of  society? 

Hence  they  reject  all  political,  and  especially  all  revolu- 
tionary action;  they  wish  to  attain  their  ends  by  peaceful 
means,  and  endeavor,  by  small  experiments,  necessarily  doom- 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  45 

ed  to  failure,  and  by  the  force  of  example,  to  pave  the  way 
for  the  new  social  Gospel. 

Such  phantastic  pictures  of  future  society,  painted  at  a 
time  when  the  proletariat  is  still  in  a  very  undeveloped  state 
and  has  but  a  phantastic  conception  of  its  own  position,  cor- 
respond with  the  iirst  instinctive  yearnings  of  that  class  for 
a  general  reconstruction  of  society. 

But  these  Socialist  and  Communist  publications  contain 
also  a  critical  element.  They  attack  every  principle  of  ex- 
isting society.  Hence  they  are  full  of  the  most  valuable  ma- 
terials for  the  enlightenment  of  the  working  class.  The  prac- 
tical measures  proposed  in  them,  such  as  the  abolition  of  the 
distinction  between  town  and  country,  of  the  family,  of  the 
carrying  on  of  industries  for  the  account  of  private  indi- 
viduals, and  of  the  wage  system,  the  proclamation  of  social 
harmony,  the  conversion  of  the  functions  of  the  State  into  a 
mere  superintendence  of  production,  all  these  proposals  point 
solely  to  the  disappearance  of  class  antagonisms  which  were, 
at  that  time,  only  just  cropping  up,  and  which,  in  these  pub- 
lications, are  recognized  imder  their  earliest,  indistinct  and 
undefined  forms  only.  These  proposals,  therefore,  are  of  a 
purely  Utopian  character. 

The  significance  of  Critical-Utopian  Socialism  and  Com- 
munism bears  an  inverse  relation  to  historical  development. 
In  proportion  as  the  modern  class  struggle  develops  and 
takes  definite  shape,  this  phantastic  standing  apart  from  the 
contest,  these  phantastic  attacks  on  it  lose  all  practical  value 
and  all  theoretical  justification.  Therefore,  although  the 
originators  of  these  systems  were,  in  many  respects,  revolu- 
tionary, their  disciples  have  in  every  case  formed  mere  reac- 
tionary sects.  They  hold  fast  by  the  original  views  of  their 
masters,  in  opposition  to  the  progressive  historical  develop- 
ment of  the  proletariat.  They,  therefore,  endeavor,  and  that 
consistently,  to  deaden  the  class  struggle  and  to  reconcile  the 


46  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

class  antagonisms.  They  still  dream  of  experimental  realiza- 
tion of  their  social  Utopias,  of  founding  isolated  ^'phalan- 
steres,"  of  establishing  "Home  Colonies/^  of  setting  up  a 
"Little  Icaria"  (c) — duodecimo  editions  of  the  New  Jeru- 
salem, and  to  realize  all  these  castles  in  the  air,  they  are 
compelled  to  appeal  to  the  feelings  and  purses  of  the  bour- 
geois. By  degrees  they  sink  into  the  category  of  the  reac- 
tionary conservative  Socialists  depicted  above,  differing  from 
these  only  by  more  systematic  pedantry,  and  by  their  fanat- 
ical and  superstitious  belief  in  the  miraculous  effects  of  their 
social  science. 

They,  therefore,  violently  oppose  all  political  action  on 
the  part  of  the  working  class ;  such  action,  according  to  them, 
can  only  result  from  blind  unbelief  in  the  new  Gospel. 

The  Owenites  in  England,  and  the  Fourierists  in  France, 
respectively,  oppose  the  Chartists  and  the  "Eeformistes." 


IV. 

POSITION"  OF  THE  COMMUNISTS  IN  RELATION  TO 
THE  VARIOUS  EXISTING  OPPOSITION  PARTIES. 

Section  II.  has  made  clear  the  relations  of  the  Commun- 
ists to  the  existing  working  class  parties,  such  as  the  Chartists 
in  England  and  the  Agrarian  Reformers  in  America. 

The  Communists  fight  for  the  attainment  of  the  imme- 
diate aims,  for  the  enforcement  of  the  momentary  interests 
of  the  working  class ;  but  in  the  movement  of  the  present,  they 
also  represent  and  take  care  of  the  future  of  that  movement. 
In  France  the  Communists  ally  themselves  with  the  Social- 


(c)  Phalansteres  were  socialist  colonies  on  the  plan  of  Charles 
Fourier;  Icaria  was  the  name  given  by  Cabet  to  his  Utopia  and, 
later  on,  to  his  American  Communist  colony. 


COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO.  47 

Democrats  (a),  against  the  conservative  and  radical  bour- 
geoisie, reserving,  however,  the  right  to  take  up  a  critical 
position  in  regard  to  phrases  and  illusions  traditionally 
handed  down  from  the  great  Revolution. 

In  Switzerland  they  support  the  Radicals,  without  losing 
sight  of  the  fact  that  this  party  consists  of  antagonistic  ele- 
ments, partly  of  Democratic  Socialists,  in  the  French  sense, 
partly  of  radical  bourgeois. 

In  Poland  they  support  the  party  that  insists  on  an  agra- 
rian revolution,  as  the  prime  condition  for  national  emanci- 
pation, that  party  which  fomented  the  insurrection  of  Cracow 
in  1846. 

In  Germany  they  fight  with  the  bourgeoisie  whenever  it 
acts  in  a  revolutionary  way  against  the  absolute  monarchy, 
the  feudal  squirearchy,  and  the  petty  bourgeoisie. 

But  they  never  cease,  for  a  single  instant,  to  instil  into 
the  working  class  the  clearest  possible  recognition  of  the  hos- 
tile antagonism  between  bourgeoisie  and  proletariat,  in  order 
that  the  German  workers  may  straightway  use,  as  so  many 
weapons  against  the  bourgeoisie,  the  social  and  political  con- 
ditions that  the  bourgeoisie  must  necessarily  introduce  along 
with  its  supremacy,  and  in  order  that,  after  the  fall  of  the 
reactionary  classes  in  Germany,  the  fight  against  the  bour- 
geoisie itself  may  immediately  begin. 

The  Communists  turn  their  attention  chiefly  to  Germany, 
because  that  country  is  on  the  eve  of  a  bourgeois  revolution 
that  is  bound  to  be  carried  out  under  more  advanced  condi- 
tions of  European  civilization,  and  with  a  much  more  de- 
veloped proletariat,  than  that  of  England  was  in  the  seven- 
teenth, and  of  France  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  because 

(a)  The  party  then  represented  in  parliament  by  Ledru-RoUin, 
in  literature  by  Louis  Blanc,  in  the  daily  press  by  the  Reforme.  The 
name  of  Social-Democracy  signified,  with  these  its  inventors,  a  section 
of  the  Democratic  or  Republican  party  more  or  less  tinged  with 
Socialism. 


48  COMMUNIST  MANIFESTO. 

the  bourgeois  revolution  in  Germany  will  be  but  the  prelude 
to  an  immediately  following  proletarian  revolution. 

In  short,  the  Qommunists  everywhere  support  every  rev- 
olutionary movement  against  the  existing  social  and  polit- 
ical order  of  things. 

In  all  these  mo^^ements  they  bring,  to  the  front,  as  the 
leading  question  in  each,  the  property  question,  no  matter 
what  its  degree  of  development  at  the  time. 

Finally,  they  labor  everywhere  for  the  union  and  agree- 
ment of  the  democratic  parties  of  all  countries. 

The  Communists  disdain  to  conceal  their  views  and  aims. 
They  openly  declare  that  their  ends  can  be  attained  only  by 
the  forcible  overthrow  of  all  existing  social  conditions.  Let 
the  ruling  classes  tremble  at  a  Communistic  revolution.  The 
proletarians  have  nothing  to  lose  but  their  chains.  They 
have  a  world  to  win. 

Workingmen  of  all  countries  unite ! 


THE   END. 


The  Preamble 


OF  THE 


INDUSTRIAL  WORKERS 


OF  THE  WORLD 


An   Addrcsi    Delivered  at  Minneapolis,  Mlan^ 
By  DANIEL  DE  LEON 


The  organization  of  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World,  at 
Cliicago,  July  10,  1905,  marked  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
Labor  Movement  in  America,  for  the  reason  that,  as  the  preamble 
to  the  constitution  declares,  there  can  be  no  peace  between  the  ex- 
ploited working  class  and  the  exploiting  capitalist  class;  the  I.  W. 
W.  organized  on  that  basis — the  recognition  of  the  class  struggle. 


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WHAT  MEANS  THIS  STRIKE?  j 


By  DANIIL  DB  LEON 

**What  Means  This  Strike?"  is  an  address  delivered  before  the  strik- 
ing textile  workers  of  New  Bedford,  Mass.  It  is  the  best  thing  extant 
with  which  to  begin  the  study  of  Socialism.  The  strike  is  used  as  an 
object  lesson  to  show  the  nature  of  capitalist  society.  The  development 
of  the  capitalist  is  clearly  given,  showing  why  it  is  that  the  capitalist 
class  is  able  to  live  in  idleness  and  luxury  while  the  working  class  rots 
in  poverty  and  toil. 

CJONTBNTS. — Whence  Do  Wages  Oome,  and  Whence  Profits— Th«  Capitalist 
Syatem  of  Production— Nature  oi"  the  "  Work "  Performed  by  the  Capitalist- 
Mechanism  of  Stock  Corporation— Nature  of  the  "  Work "  Performed  by  the 
"  Directors  "  of  Stock  Corporations — "  Original  Accumulation  " — ^How  the  Capital- 
ist In  General  Gets  His  Capital — How  Levi  P.  Morton  Got  His  Capital— The  Class 
Struggle — Nature  of  the  Conflict  Between  the  Working  Class  and  the  Capitalist  Class 
—Development  of  Capitalist  Society— Development  of  the  Strike— How  the  Capitalists 
Rob  Inventors— How  the  Capitalist  Uses  Machinery  to  Rob  and  Subjugate  the 
Working  Class— Why  the  Modern  Strike  Is  Usually  a  Failure — Principles  of  the 
Organization  the  Working  Class  Must  Have  to  Fight  Successfully  the  Capitalist 
Class — Weaknesses  of  "  Pure  and  Simple  "  Trade  Unions— Career  of  Samuel  Gompers 
—There  Will  Be  No  Safety  for  the  Working  Class  Until  It  Wrenches  the  QoTernment 
from  the  Capitalist  Class,  Abolishes  the  Wages  System  of  Slavery,  and  Unfurls 
the  Banner  of  the  Socialist  Republic. 

Single  Copies,  5  Cents;  100  Copies, 


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